the keyword research tool

Try Keyword Explorer for free

The seo keyword research tool with over 1.25 billion traffic-driving keywords., perform in-depth keyword and serp analysis with the industry-leading keyword research tool., analyze keywords by search volume.

Effectively predict how much search volume a keyword will receive with more than 95% accuracy.

Generate and save keyword lists

Comprehensive scoring helps you prioritize keywords by topic or focus in one place to use as a keyword planner.

Export your data

Easily export keyword research suggestions, analyses, and lists into metrics-rich, well-formatted CSVs.

Find keywords in question format

Stay ahead of the curve by targeting long-tail keywords with high relevance, broadly related topics, or keywords in the form of questions.

Sort by predictive keyword metrics

The Keyword Difficulty, Volume, and expected Organic Click-Through Rate scores help predict your ability to rank and drive traffic.

Review SERP details by keyword

Understand why pages rank where they do with a SERP analysis breakdown of the elements and link data at each ranking position.

Check Keyword Difficulty

Moz’s proprietary Keyword Difficulty score shows how easy (or hard) it is to rank on each SERP.

Take your SEO strategy global

Search keyword suggestions and ranking keywords by country for better international SEO strategies.

Perform competitive keyword analysis

See what keywords your site ranks for and discover your competitors' most important keywords.

Do better keyword research in less time. Identify which keywords your site could rank for right now and find high-impact suggestions.

1.25 billion keyword suggestions, 180 million fresh ranking keywords, 170 google search engines.

Generate relevant Keyword Suggestions

The Keyword Suggestions feature helps you discover keywords and topics you may never have considered. The list of suggestions is sorted by Moz’s Relevancy metric by default. A high score indicates that the suggested keyword appears in many sources of competitor content reviewed by Moz, and are lexically similar to the original keyword. You can sort Keyword Suggestions by Monthly Volume, exported to CSV files, or add them directly into your Moz Campaigns and Keyword Lists.

Analyze the SERP for a given keyword

The SERP (Search Engine Results Page) Analysis helps you understand the landscape of a keyword. It will help you answer the question, “Who is ranking for this keyword, and how?” SERP previews include Moz Domain Authority, Page Authority, and backlink metrics for each organic result.

Results in the SERP Analysis also include Page Scores via Moz Pro’s ‘On Page Grader’ tool This score, based on a scale of 1 to 100, indicates how well-optimized the content is for the target keyword. A high score indicates that the page’s content, meta data, internal linking profile, and other technical SEO features will maximize organic search visibility for the target keyword.

Create Keyword Lists

Keyword Lists will help you organize, track, and compare thousands of keywords side by side, empowering you to target the most effective keywords. Seamlessly add suggested keywords to an existing Keyword List, or create a new one on the fly. Moz Pro allows you to group keywords for you based on lexical similarity, which allows you to quickly find subtopics and pre-categorized clusters of search terms within the parent keyword. Once your Keyword List is created, Moz Pro will display search Monthly Volume totals, estimated available CTR for organic results, keyword Difficulty scores, and the distribution of rich SERP features appearing for the entire list. For better international SEO strategies, search for keyword suggestions and ranking keywords by country.

Preview SERP features for every keyword

Moz’s SERP Analysis also displays rich search engine results such as Top Stories, Images, Knowledge Graphs, Featured Snippets, Ad Results and even Tweets. This will help you understand the search landscape of every keyword, and how you can best optimize your site to match the intent of the query .

Explore Keywords by Site

Uncover your site’s organic search keywords. Decide if you want to track any of these terms by adding them directly to your Keyword Lists, or export up to 10,000 rows as a CSV. Results can be filtered by Ranking, Difficulty, or Volume for precise, actionable SEO data. This feature can also be used to performa deep-dive on all of your competitors ranking search terms. Enter any URL into the search bar for a full list of their SEO keywords.

Perform organic keyword analysis on your competitors

See what keywords your site ranks for and discover your competitors' most important keywords. Moz Keyword Explorer can help you perform a gap analysis to determine where you can improve specific rankings relative to your competitors. Filter results by ranking position, search volume, or Moz’s proprietary Keyword Difficulty score, which shows how easy (or hard) it is to rank on each SERP.

Moz’s Keyword Explorer neatly ties together keyword research metrics and makes complex analysis easy so we can spend less time in spreadsheets and more time generating qualified website traffic.

Part of the most trusted SEO analytics platform

Keyword Explorer is part of the entire Moz Pro SEO analytics platform. Improve the ROI of your content strategy with competitive intelligence and actionable recommendations.

The 4 best free keyword research tools in 2024

Hero image with the logos of the best keyword research tools

There's no shortage of tools purpose-built for keyword research (literally hundreds of them), and they run the gamut from beginner-focused to highly advanced. They also range from totally basic and unhelpful to super valuable.

When done right, the best keyword research tools simplify and streamline your workflow—they make it easier to find the right keywords to target and give you the data you need to actually rank for them. But they shouldn't require you to empty out your bank account and sell your first-born child in order to access that data.

After years of working with multiple clients who use all different tools for keyword research and SEO content optimization, I've seen the best (and the worst) of them—and I know how important it is to choose the right keyword planner tool. To help, I considered over 80 tools with a free option for keyword research. After in-depth testing, here are the four best free keyword research tools, including the all-around greats and apps built for more specific use cases.

The best free keyword research tools

What makes the best keyword research tool, how we evaluate and test apps.

The features that make for a great keyword research tool are pretty straightforward: you search for a given keyword, and the tool tells you about it. But there are so many different ways to use keyword data, so I wanted to find tools that could handle a variety of use cases, along with a few designed for some of the most popular uses for keyword research.

During testing, I looked primarily at the factors below to determine which apps made the initial list.

Keyword optimization guidance. You shouldn't have to be a 10-year SEO industry veteran to use keyword research tools—the best tools offer simple, straightforward suggestions to optimize for your keywords. There are tools (like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz) that do complete SEO analysis on your site, checking for everything from site speed and technical details to domain authority and topic clusters. That's not what we're looking for here. We're looking for tools that any business owner or marketer can use to quickly understand their target keyword and optimize their site to rank for it.

Free plan allowances and upgrades. Some tools include super limited results for free and call it a "free plan." Or they put time limits on the free plan, effectively making it more of a trial. I only included tools with evergreen free plans generous enough to actually be useful—and they won't break the bank when it's time to upgrade, either. One of my favorite tools from last year, Ahrefs, didn't make the cut this year because its keyword research tools are no longer free.

To find the best of the best, I put each tool that checked those boxes to the test by running through an in-depth protocol. Here's what my testing workflow looked like:

If needed, I created an account and went through any provided onboarding or guided tutorials (many of these free apps don't require account creation or provide any onboarding).

I checked which related keywords, metrics, and other data were offered. I also made note of the source, whether information was pulled from Google, included non-search engine websites (like social media or forums), or was drawn from the tool's own native data.

I verified allowances for the free plan—whether limited by time, number of results, metrics included, searches per day or month, or something else—and the cost to upgrade to a paid plan if needed.

Where available, I tested out additional keyword research tools like competitive gap analysis, content optimization features, and more.

After spending over a dozen hours with these apps this year, I landed on the four best keyword research tools—each with a manageable free version—below.

The best free keyword research tools at a glance


An all-around solution	Keyword prioritization metrics	10 queries per tool per month, with 1,000 keyword suggestions and 10 SERP analyses per query
Researching paid keywords	Forecasting features and budget planning	Completely free (but you get more out of it if you use Google Ads)
Advanced SEO professionals	Granular keyword data	10 Analytics reports per day, 10 tracked keywords
Basic, simple keyword research	Suggested content angles	Completely free

The best free keyword research tool overall

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Moz, our pick for the best keyword research tool overall

More approachable data presentation than many other tools

Straightforward prioritization metrics

Broad set of tools available for free

Less data than more robust tools

Free plan only includes 10 queries per tool per month

With the Keyword Explorer tool, you can search any keyword you choose and see its monthly volume, difficulty, and organic clickthrough rate (CTR). Scroll down from there to see an analysis of current results ranking for it and suggestions for similar keywords.

Metrics like straightforward keyword difficulty and minimum domain authority make it easy to prioritize the keywords you have the best chance to rank for—and avoid wasting your time on out-of-reach queries.

Plus, with the Keyword Gap feature (part of the Competitive Research tool), you can find all the keywords your competitors rank for that you don't.

The best free keyword research tool for paid keywords

Google Keyword Planner pros:

Completely free forever, even if you don't use Google Ads

Helpful forecasting features for budgeting if you do use Google Ads

Can pull keyword suggestions from just your website

Google Keyword Planner cons:

Not helpful for organic keyword research

Google Keyword Planner includes two main features: one for exploratory keyword research and discovery and another for more in-depth research on search volume and forecasting.

The "Keyword ideas" feature is similar to many of the tools on this list: you search for a seed term, and it generates other keyword ideas, along with details on monthly search volume, change over time, competition, ad impression share, and bid ranges. You can refine your keyword list by brand or non-brand keywords, source website, and more. If you're also using Google Ads, the "Forecast" feature makes it easier to plan ahead for your paid ads and budget in advance.

Keyword Planner can inform your organic strategy, too, by showing you where ranking organically may help you save on PPC costs.

Google Keyword Planner pricing: Free

The best free keyword research tool for advanced SEO

Semrush pros:

Tons of granular keyword data

Wide range of specialized keyword research tools

Pretty generous free plan

Semrush cons:

Can be overwhelming for those less experienced with keyword research

Most expensive upgrade

If you're looking for something more advanced, Semrush shares a ton of keyword data and makes it easy to dig into the details, like SERP features (featured snippet, reviews, site links, image pack, and so on) and granular analysis of current results. Semrush offers a broad range of keyword research tools, too, from the standard traffic and search volume data to content-driven keyword research and competitive keyword gap analysis.

That range is what really sets Semrush apart, including the standard Keyword Overview, the Keyword Magic Tool for exploratory keyword research, a Keyword Manager and position tracking, competitive Keyword Gap analysis, and Organic Traffic Insights, which—when connected with your Google Analytics or Search Console account—can uncover those famously tricky "not provided" keywords.

As an added bonus, the SEO Content Template tool lets you automatically create a content brief and optimize content as you write by grading your content in real-time for readability, originality, tone of voice, and SEO: it uses a handy bullseye graphic to help you strike the right balance. Plus, the tool visually checks off SEO recommendations (like using your target and related keywords and adding relevant links and images) as you go.

All of this means that upgrading will cost you a pretty penny—but you can use it for free at low volumes to start.

Create new Asana tasks from SEMrush's new site audit campaign tasks

Create Notion database items for new SEMrush Site Audit tasks.

Send Slack channel messages for completed SEMrush site audits

The best simple and free keyword research tool

Free Keyword Research Tool pros:

Simple, straightforward report

Unique suggested content angles

Free Keyword Research Tool cons:

Very basic data

No built-in way to save your research

If you're looking for a straightforward tool to give you basic data on keywords, Ryan Robinson's Free Keyword Research Tool is a super simple option.

The Explorer tab pulls up related queries for any keyword you search, along with ballpark search volume numbers and a keyword difficulty characterization from "low" to "very high." My favorite feature here is the suggested angles you can use to build content. Tab over to the Ideas tab (or click the lightbulb icon on any of the related keywords) to see suggested long-form versions of the keyword that can help inform your content angle.

That's… pretty much all there is here. You can't get a ton of data from this tool—and there's no upgrade option for when you're ready to financially invest in your search strategy. But if basic keyword research is all you really need, it's worth a look.

Free Keyword Research Tool pricing: 100% free

Can you use AI chatbots for keyword research?

The main benefit of going the AI route is simplicity. You can ask for straightforward, simplified results and get a simple, streamlined answer.

Here's Gemini, for example.

Gemini showing search volume, difficulty, and competitor articles

And here's ChatGPT.

ChatGPT showing monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitor articles

ChatGPT was more upfront about the sources it used (in the screenshot above, for example, you could click on "Searched 7 sites" to see the specific websites the chatbot referenced). But it also offered search volume numbers—which seems impressive, if it weren't for the fact that I know it's making it up. ChatGPT isn't able to read real-time data (it'll even admit this itself if you ask). Gemini was more transparent: it told me it couldn't pull precise monthly search volume numbers (it's not even connected to Google Keyword Planner), and it only told me the type of content it expects to rank for that keyword—not the actual content that's currently ranking.

I'll admit, both ChatGPT and Gemini have improved a lot since last year, especially when it comes to more complex prompts. That said, the information they provided still falls short of the utility you get from a tool that's actually designed for keyword research. For now, at least.

If you're in a bind and need simplified, bottom line-style information on a keyword quickly, an AI chatbot may be of some help. But as of today, I wouldn't recommend using AI chatbot as your primary keyword research tool—especially given the number of truly helpful dedicated free keyword research tools you can use instead.

Of course, lots of dedicated SEO tools (though usually not the free ones), will have AI built in—that's the best of both worlds.

When should you upgrade from a free keyword research tool?

The short answer is: only when you need to. If you can get all the data you need without going over the allowances of one of the free plans above, there's no reason to upgrade to a paid plan (or switch to a fully paid tool).

With that said, here are a few signs it may be time to consider upgrading:

You're regularly hitting the monthly or daily search limits of your current solution.

You're missing out on features you can't get for free, like content optimization guidance or the ability to track your site's keywords and rankings over time.

You need additional SEO features that an upgraded all-in-one tool can provide (like technical SEO, site auditing, etc).

When the time comes, some of the tools on this list can grow right along with you. Moz Pro is a super robust tool, for example, as is Semrush. There are also a number of popular tools with affordable starting plans, including GetKeywords, KWFinder, and Topic Ranker.

Here are Zapier's lists of helpful SEO tools to get you started:

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Semrush helps you:

Do keyword research
Audit your local listings
Perform competitor analyses
Manage social media accounts
And much more!

Backlinko readers get unlimited access for 14 days. 55+ tools.

Find Keyword Ideas in Seconds

Boost SEO results with powerful keyword research

Keyword Research for SEO: The Definitive Guide

Written by Brian Dean

Today I’m going to show you exactly how to do keyword research in 2024.

In this comprehensive guide I’ll cover:

How to find keywords
How to choose the right keywords
How to use popular keyword research tools
Advanced keyword research tips

So if you want higher Google rankings and more traffic, you’ll love this guide.

Let’s get started.

1. Keyword Research Basics

2. How to Find Keyword Ideas + Template

3. Keyword Research Tools

4. Keyword Difficulty

5. How to Choose a Keyword

6. Advanced Tips and Strategies

Chapter 1: keyword research basics.

In this chapter, I’ll cover the fundamentals of keyword research.

First, you’ll practically learn what keyword research is (and why it’s important for SEO ).

I’ll also show you how keyword research helped grow my site’s search engine traffic to 360k+ unique visitors per month.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research is the process of identifying and analyzing the specific words and phrases that people use to search for information online. This valuable insight helps you create content, ads, and videos that directly address your target audience’s search queries, enhancing your website’s visibility and attracting more visitors.

Try the FREE Backlinko Keyword Research Tool . Discover new keywords and performance data to use in your site content, SEO campaigns, and more.

Why is Keyword Research Important for SEO?

Keyword research impacts every other SEO task that you perform, including finding content topics, on-page SEO , email outreach , and content promotion.

That’s why keyword research is usually the first step of any SEO campaign .

Put another way:

Keywords are like a compass for your SEO campaigns: they tell you where to go and whether or not you’re making progress.

As a bonus, researching keywords help you better understand your target audience. That’s because keyword research gives you insight into what customers are searching for… and the exact words and phrases that they use.

In other words: keyword research is market research for the 21st century.

How Keyword Research Helped My Site’s Traffic Grow

Today, my site generates 449,058 visitors every month:

And 362,732 of those visitors (80.78%) come from Google:

Backlinko – Organic traffic – September 2021

Obviously, there are a lot of factors that went into my site’s success with SEO, including content, on-site optimization, link building and technical SEO .

But the #1 factor that contributed to my site’s traffic growth was keyword research.

For example:

A while back I used the process in this guide to uncover a low-competition keyword: mobile SEO.

And I created a piece of SEO-optimized content around that term: The Definitive Guide to Mobile SEO .

Because that keyword wasn’t super competitive, my site quickly ranked in the top 3:

And thanks to that top 3 ranking, that single page brings in hundreds of visitors from Google every month:

With that, it’s time for chapter 2.

Chapter 2: How to Find Keyword Ideas

Now it’s time to get into the nitty gritty of keyword research.

Specifically, it’s time to generate a list of keywords.

In this chapter I’m going to show you proven strategies that you can use to come up with LOTS of keyword ideas.

Let’s dive right in.

Keyword Research Template

Whether you’re starting a new SEO project, want to improve your site’s search traffic, or are looking for target keywords for a new piece of content, this template will help you do keyword research quickly and effectively.

Why Use a Keyword Research Template?

This template brings together all the different tool options and approaches into one place. So instead of bouncing around between a thousand tabs, losing track of where you are in the process…

You can just go through this template. Simple. Step-by-step.

When you’re done, you’ll have a BIG list of keywords. Plus all the metrics to help you pick which to target.

Download Now: Keyword Research Template

Brainstorm a List of Topics

Here’s where you come up with topics that your target customer is interested in.

For example, let’s say that you run a digital marketing agency.

Well, you’d want to ask yourself: ”What topics do people search for that are related to my business?”

Some topics that come to mind would be things like:

Social media
Email marketing
Website traffic
Content Marketing

Note: These topics aren’t keywords (yet).

Which is exactly what you’re going to learn how to do right now…

Wikipedia Table of Contents

Wikipedia is an overlooked keyword research goldmine.

Where else can you find articles curated by thousands of industry experts… all organized into neat little categories?

Here’s how to use Wikipedia to find keyword ideas.

First, head over to Wikipedia and type in a broad keyword:

That will take you to the Wikipedia entry for that broad topic.

Then, look for the “contents” section of the page. This section lists out the subtopics covered on that page.

And some of the subtopics listed here are awesome keywords that would be tough to find any other way:

You can also click on some of the internal links on the page to check out the Table of Contents of other, closely related entries.

For example, on the coffee entry we have a link to “Coffee Preparation”:

When you click on that link, you’ll notice that the table of contents for the Coffee Preparation page has even more keywords that you can add to your list:

Pretty cool.

Searches Related To

Another cool way to find keywords is to check out the “Searches Related to” section at the bottom of Google’s search results.

For example, let’s say one of your topics was “content marketing”.

Well, you’d want to search for that keyword in Google.

And scroll to the bottom of the page. You’ll find a list of 8 keywords that are closely related to your search term.

Just like with Google Suggest, these are keyword ideas that come straight from Google . So you don’t need to guess whether or not they’re popular. Google is literally telling you: “Tons of people search for these keywords.”

Pro Tip: Click on one of the “Searches Related To” keywords.

Then, scroll to the bottom of THOSE results. This will give you a new list of related keywords. Rinse and repeat.

Find Keywords on Reddit

Chances are your target audience hangs out on Reddit.

Which means you can usually find lots of keyword ideas on this platform.

Here’s how:

Let’s say that you run a site that sells organic dog food.

You’d head over to Reddit. Then search for a broad topic that your target audience is interested in… and something that’s related to what you sell.

Then, choose a subreddit where your audience probably hangs out:

Finally, keep an eye out for threads that have lots of comments, like this:

In this case you’d add “dog food allergies” to your keyword ideas list.

Pro Tip: “ Keyworddit ” is a free SEO tool that scans Reddit for words and phrases that people use… and sorts those phrases by monthly search volume.

Use Google and YouTube Suggest

Now that you have a list of topics, type each one of them into Google.

And see what terms that Google Suggests to you.

Google search – "content marketing" – Suggestions

These are great keywords to add to your list.

Because if Google suggests a keyword, you KNOW that lots of people are searching for it.

But you don’t need to stop with Google Suggest.

You can also find keyword suggestions with YouTube Suggest:

Find Popular Topics Using Forums

Forums are like having live focus groups at your fingertips 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The easiest way to find forums where your target audience hangs out is to use these search strings in Google:

“keyword forum” “keyword” + “forum” “keyword” + “forums” “keyword” + “board”

Once you find a forum, note how the forum is divided up into sections: Each of these sections are potential keywords that you can add to your list.

To dig deeper, check out some of the threads on the forum to find other specific topics that your target audience struggles with:

Pretty cool, right?

Chapter 3: Keyword Research Tools

This chapter is all about tools.

Can you find keywords without a tool?

But a tool makes the entire process A LOT easier.

With that, here are the keyword research tools that I personally use and recommend.

If you want to invest in a paid keyword tool, I HIGHLY recommend Semrush .

That’s because Semrush is a HUGE time saver.

Here’s why…

Instead of popping random keywords into a tool, Semrush shows you the exact keywords that a site already ranks for.

It also uses AI to tell you how difficult it will be for your domain to compete for a chosen keyword.

With the help of Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD%) and Topical Authority metrics, you can easily evaluate your chances for each target keyword.

So if you have a site you’re competing against in Google, just pop it into Semrush.

And steal all of their keywords.

The Google Keyword Planner

Google’s Keyword Planner is THE most reliable source of keyword information online.

That’s because, unlike most other tools, the data you get from the Keyword Planner come straight from Google.

(So you know they’re accurate.)

The big downside of the GKP is that it’s designed to help people with their Google ad campaigns… not with SEO.

That said, you can still use the GKP to get lists of keyword ideas…

…and find search queries that get lots of searches.

ExplodingTopics.com

This new tool is like Google Trends… but better.

Exploding Topics scrapes the web for terms that are surging in popularity. And it bubbles those terms up for you.

You can even sort the list of topics by category.

Keyword Surfer

Keyword Surfer might be my favorite keyword research tool.

Because it shows you keyword ideas from inside Google’s search results.

All you need to do is install the Chrome extension. And the next time you search for something in Google, you’ll see a list of keyword ideas… and data on each keyword.

Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest was the first Google suggest scraper that I used. And the tool recently got a massive upgrade and overhaul.

Ubersuggest still generates keyword ideas from Google’s search suggestions. But it also gives you data on each keyword (like search volume, CPC, keyword difficulty and more).

Most people consider Ahrefs a link building tool .

But not as many people know that Ahrefs also has a REALLY good keyword tool.

What’s nice about Ahrefs “Keyword Explorer” is that you get a ton of helpful data on each keyword.

Which can help you decide whether or not it’s a keyword that’s worth going after.

My one gripe with Keyword Explorer is that it’s not great at coming up with new keyword ideas. It usually generates keywords that are just simple variations of the keyword I typed in.

When it comes to drilling down to a single term, you can’t do much better than the features found in Ahrefs Keyword Explorer.

Chapter 4: Keyword Difficulty

How do you know if a keyword is too competitive to rank for?

It’s a good question to ask.

Because if you choose a keyword that’s super competitive, you might have trouble getting past Google’s third page.

But if you can find a keyword without a ton of competition, you have a good chance of cracking the top 3.

With that, here’s how to figure out a keyword’s SEO difficulty.

Long Tails Are (Usually) Less Competitive

If your site is brand new.

Or if you want to focus 100% on keywords that aren’t competitive.

Then you DEFINITELY want to target long tail keywords .

I’ll explain…

Most people in SEO (myself included) divide keywords into three main categories: head, body and the long tail.

Here’s a breakdown of each keyword type:

These are usually single-word keywords with lots of search volume… and competition. Examples of head terms are keywords like “insurance” or “vitamins”. Because searcher intent is all over the place (someone searching for “insurance” might be looking for a car insurance quote, a list of life insurance companies or a definition of the word), Head Terms usually don’t convert very well.

Body Keywords

Body keywords are 2-3 word phrases that get decent search volume (at least 2,000 searches per month), but are more specific than Head Keywords. Keywords like “life insurance” or “order vitamins online” are examples of Body Keywords. These almost always have less competition than Head Terms.

Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are long, 4+ word phrases that are usually very specific. Phrases like “affordable life insurance for senior citizens” and “order vitamin D capsules online” are examples of long tail keywords. These terms don’t get a lot of search volume individually (usually around 10-200 searches per month). But when you add them together, long tails make up the majority of searches online. And because they don’t get searches for that much, long tail terms usually aren’t very competitive.

There’s no “best” keyword category to focus on. All 3 have their pros and cons.

But when it comes to competition, long tails are usually the least competitive of the bunch.

Authority of Sites on Google’s First Page

Here’s a quick way to evaluate a keyword’s competition level.

First, search for your keyword in Google.

Then, look at the sites ranking on the first page.

(Not individual pages.)

If the first page is made up of uber authority sites (like Wikipedia), then you might want to cross that keyword off from your list:

But if you see a handful of smaller blogs on page 1, that’s a sign that you have a shot to hit the first page too.

Keyword Difficulty Inside of Keyword Tools

The vast majority of keyword research tools have some sort of keyword competition feature, including Semrush :

And Moz Pro :

We recently tested a bunch of them . And we found that they all size up keyword difficulty based on a combination of page authority and domain authority. YET they all tend to come up with completely different keyword difficulty scores.

However, Semrush is a bit different.

It uses AI technology to make the keyword difficulty metric more personalized.

Semrush uses a cutting-edge algorithm to measure how relevant your domain is to a keyword.

It checks the competition level within your niche and compares your site’s metrics with those of your competitors on the SERP.

Bottom Line? If your favorite keyword tool includes a keyword difficulty feature, go with that. It may not be perfect. But they do tend to give you a general idea of how competitive a keyword is to rank for.

Believe it or not, but there’s an entire tool dedicated to keyword difficulty: CanIRank .

What I like about this tool is that it doesn’t just spit out a keyword difficulty number. Instead, it evaluates a keyword’s competition level relative to your website.

For example, I popped the keyword “SEO” into CanIRank.

And the tool looked at Google’s first page competition compared to my site’s authority . And it gave me a “Ranking Probability” of 90%:

Super helpful.

Chapter 5: How to Choose a Keyword

Now that you have a list of keywords, how do you know which one to pick?

Unfortunately, there’s no tool out there that will tell you: “ This is the best keyword on your list”.

Instead, you need to size up each keyword based on a handful of different factors. Then, pick the keyword that’s the best fit for your business.

Additionally, conducting keyword analysis to ensure reaching the target audience takes time and effort. Lucky for you, Backlinko simplified the process to ease your work.

As you might expect, that’s exactly what I’m going to show you how to do in this chapter.

Search Volume

This is pretty straightforward.

The more people search for a keyword, the more traffic you can get from it.

The question is:

What’s a “good” search volume?

Short answer: it depends.

The long answer:

Search volumes vary A LOT between different industries.

For example, a long tail keyword in the fitness niche (like: “best ab exercises”) gets 10K-100K searches per month:

But a long tail keyword in a B2B space like digital marketing (like: “best seo software”) only gets 100-1K monthly searches.

That’s why you want to figure out what a “high” and “low” search volume number is in your niche.

Then, choose keywords based on what’s “normal” for your industry.

Organic Click-Through-Rate

It’s no secret that the number of Google searchers that click on an organic search result is way down .

And it’s no wonder why.

Featured Snippets make it so you don’t need to click on anything to get an answer:

Plus, Google now packs the search results with more ads than ever before:

The bottom line?

Search volume only gives you part of the story. To get a full estimate of how many clicks you’ll get from a first page Google ranking, you also need to estimate organic CTR.

Here are two simple ways to do it…

First, you can look at the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for your keyword.

If you see a lot of stuff on the first page (like a Featured Snippet and multiple Google Ads), then you know that you’re not going to get a ton of clicks… even if you rank #1.

Second , you can use a tool.

Ahrefs and Moz pro both estimate organic CTR.

With all that said:

I wouldn’t avoid a keyword just because it has a low CTR. If lots of people search for that term, it might still be worth going after.

If your site is new (or doesn’t have a ton of links yet), target low-competition terms at first.

Then, as your site grows in authority, you can start to target more competitive stuff.

When I first launched Backlinko, I targeted almost 100% long tail keywords (like: “how to get backlinks”).

And because I didn’t have a ton of sites to compete with, I was able to get some organic traffic rolling in within a few weeks. Which helped me achieve some early SEO success.

Today, my site has backlinks from over 71k different domains:

So I can target more competitive keywords (like: “YouTube SEO”).

CPC (cost per click) is a single metric that answers one important question:

Do people searching for this keyword actually spend money?

So yeah, search volume is nice and all.

But if that keyword has zero commercial intent, then there’s no point in targeting that term.

Plus, you can sometimes get a great ROI from a keyword that doesn’t get that many searches… if the CPC is high enough.

For example, one of my target keywords is “link building services”.

According to Semrush, this keyword gets 4.4K searches per month.

Keyword Overview – Link building services – Volume

So if I ONLY looked at search volume, I’d say: “This is a horrible keyword”.

That’s why it’s super important to ALSO look at CPC.

The CPC on that keyword is $10.38.

This means that people are spending over $10 every time someone searching for that keyword clicks on an ad.

So even though the search volume for that term isn’t that high, the CPC more than makes up for it.

Based on CPC (and the fact that the keyword wasn’t super competitive) I decided to create content optimized around that term.

And that blog post now ranks in the top 3 for my target keyword.

Business Fit

Here’s where you look at how likely it is that someone searching for a keyword will become a customer.

Yup, CPC helps you figure this out. But it doesn’t tell the entire story.

For example, a few weeks ago I came across the keyword: “backlink checker”.

On the surface, this is a great keyword.

It gets a decent amount of searches:

And has a $4.01 CPC:

It’s also not that competitive.

So this keyword is a winner, right?

Well… not really.

You see, Backlinko is an SEO training company. Which means I don’t sell a backlink analysis tool. So even if I DID rank #1 for “backlink checker”, it wouldn’t do me much good.

Contrast that with a keyword like “YouTube SEO”.

This keyword’s CPC is only $2.22.

But considering that I sell a YouTube training course, this term is a 10/10 in terms of business fit.

This is why I wrote a piece of content around that keyword:

Keyword Trends

Finally, you want to see if your keyword is growing fast… or dying slow.

And the best way to do that? Google Trends .

For example, few years ago I was considering the keyword: “voice search SEO”.

But I decided to pop that keyword into Google Trends before pulling the trigger.

As you can see, interest in that keyword was growing quickly.

Which is why I optimized this page around that term.

Even though that piece of content only brings in about 1k monthly search engine visitors per month today…

…the trend tells me that traffic to this post should increase over time.

Another key trend to consider is the use of AI for keyword research. Think of integrating ChatGPT for diverse SEO tasks including keyword research. Learn all about how this innovative trend can impact your SEO journey in our guide.

Chapter 6: Advanced Tips and Strategies

Now that you’ve mastered the basics of keyword research, it’s time to cover some cool advanced stuff.

Specifically, I’m going to reveal a bunch of tactical keyword research tips that you can implement right away.

So without further ado, let’s dive right into the tips.

Barnacle SEO

Let’s say that you found the PERFECT keyword.

And you rank in the top 3 for that term.

You’re pretty much done, right?

Actually… not really.

As it turns out, you can get even MORE traction from that keyword with Barnacle SEO.

Barnacle SEO is the practice of using other sites’ authority to rank on the first page.

For example, one of my best keywords (in terms of conversions) is: YouTube SEO.

Like I mentioned earlier, I wrote a post about YouTube SEO . And that post ranks in the top 3 for that keyword.

Sure, a top 3 ranking is great. But it’s still only one spot in the SERPs.

That’s why I created a YouTube video optimized for that keyword…

…a video that also ranks on Google’s first page.

Bottom line? If you find an amazing keyword, you want to take up as much first page real estate as you can. First, create content on that topic on your own site. Then, publish keyword-optimized content on authority sites, like YouTube, LinkedIn, Medium and more.

GSC Keyword Research

The Google Search Console is a goldmine of keyword ideas.

Here’s how it works:

First, login to your GSC account and head over to the “Performance Report”.

Google Search Console – Performance Report

This report shows you the terms that bring in the most clicks from Google search.

Then, sort the list by “Impressions”.

This shows you keywords that get lots of impressions… but not necessarily clicks.

Finally, create a piece of content optimized around that same keyword.

Why is this a powerful strategy?

These are keywords that you KNOW people are searching for. You also know that Google sees your site as a good fit in the search results.

You just need to publish content that’s super focused on that specific keyword (or optimize a piece of existing content around that keyword) and you’re set.

Optimize Content around Synonyms and Related Keywords

Yes, you want to optimize your page around your main keyword.

But don’t stop there.

You can get even more search engine traffic to your page by optimizing it around synonyms and closely related terms.

I’ll show you how this works with a real life example.

Some time ago I published this post on my blog.

As you can probably guess, my target keyword for that page is: “search engine visibility”.

But I also made sure to sprinkle in variations of that keyword, like: “SEO visibility”.

In the end, I was able to rank #1 for my main keyword…

…and lots of keyword variations.

Semrush Keyword Gap

Keyword Gap has quickly become one of my favorite features in Semrush.

Here’s how it works:

Just like with Ahrefs, you can use Semrush to see the exact keywords another site ranks for.

And with Semrush Keyword Gap, you can take this type of competitor keyword analysis to the next level .

Here’s how:

Head over to Semrush Keyword Gap. And put in 3-4 competing sites.

This will show you keywords that at least 2 of your competitors rank for… but you don’t.

And because multiple competitors rank for these terms, you know that you also have a good chance of cracking the top 10.

Analyze Keywords Based on Searcher Intent

In other words, ask yourself:

What does someone searching for this keyword want to see?

Are they looking to buy? For information? Or are they looking for a specific page (like a login page)?

A while back I created a post that ranks #2 for the keyword “BuzzStream”.

Even though that keyword gets around 2k searches/month, that post only brings in 194 monthly visitors.

What gives?

Well, as it turns out, “BuzzStream” is a navigational keyword.

Which means that most people that search for that keyword are looking for the website… not information about BuzzStream.

So yeah, that keyword looked great at first glance. But because it’s a navigational keyword, VERY few people click on anything but the first result. Which is why that post gets so little traffic.

That’s why I recommend looking at the Search Intent of a keyword.

If Search Intent is “Navigational”, then you may want to avoid that term… even if it has great CPC and monthly search volume numbers.

(As you just saw, this is a lesson I had to learn the hard way.)

But if Searcher Intent is “Informational”, then a piece of content optimized around that term could do GREAT.

Find “Shoulder Keywords”

Most people ONLY optimize their site around keywords that are very closely related to what they sell.

And it’s a BIG mistake for two main reasons:

1. Product keywords are usually super competitive. 2. There are thousands of keywords that your potential customer searches for when they’re not searching for what you sell.

And if you can get in front of your customer with an awesome piece of content, they’re SUPER likely to buy from you down the road.

For example, like I mentioned earlier, I run an SEO training company.

But I don’t optimize every page on my site around commercial terms.

(Like “SEO training” and “SEO courses”).

Instead, I rank for keywords that my customers search for when they’re not looking for SEO training.

(Keywords like: “link building”, “on-page SEO” and “SEO Tools”).

I call these keywords “Shoulder Keywords”.

These keywords aren’t directly related to what you sell. But they’re keywords that your customers search for. Which makes them worth going after.

How about another example?

Let’s say you run an eCommerce site that sells basketball hoops.

Obviously, you’d want to optimize some of your pages around terms like “buy basketball hoops online”.

After all, someone interested in buying a basketball hoop may also search for:

How to shoot a better free throw
Slam dunk highlights
How to get recruited by college scouts
Nutrition for basketball players
How to improve a vertical jump

So you’d want to create content around these “Shoulder Keywords” too.

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Ensuring keywords match content or business is crucial. ‍ KeySearch suggests relevant keywords that correctly align with your target audience.

Long-Tail Keywords

Finding long-tail keywords is time-consuming. ‍ KeySearch mines long-tail keywords that will be hyper-specific to your readers.

Keyword Trends

Tracking keyword popularity manually is messy. ‍ KeySearch tracks keyword trends over time so you can adjust your content strategy.

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Problem: Ensuring keywords match content or business is crucial. ‍ KeySearch Solution: KeySearch suggests relevant keywords for better alignment.

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KeySearch is not just keyword research tool, it’s a full-fledged SEO powerhouse with everything you need to spy on your competitors and track your SEO efforts.

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KeySearch is the go-to SEO tool for thousands of businesses and individuals around the world. Here's what some of them have to say about us.

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Keyword Research

This tool helps you find good words or phrases (called keywords) that people use on Google. It helps you find ones that aren't too hard to compete with.

You don't need to install any software on your computer. It's fast and easy to use.

Backlink Checker

This checks which other websites are linking to your website. Links from other sites can help your website show up better on Google.

Keyword Suggestions

It gives you ideas for other keywords you can use. It also shows you how often people search for these words and how much it might cost if you use them in ads.

Keyword Rank Tracking

This tool keeps track of where your website shows up on Google.

Long Tail Keywords

Helps you find specific and often longer keywords that might be easier to rank for.

In-Depth Research

You can really dig deep into finding the best keywords for your website or business.

Difficulty Checker

Determine how hard it will be to show up on Google when you use certain keywords.

Webpage Audit Analyzer

It checks your website for any problems that might stop it from showing up well on Google.

Competitive Analysis

This helps you understand what your competitors are doing and how you can do better.

Bulk Difficulty Checker

You can check how hard it is to rank for lots of keywords at once.

YouTube Research

It helps you find good keywords for your YouTube videos.

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Starter plan.

200 keyword searches per day
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500 keyword searches per day
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Frequently asked questions

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KeySearch utilizes advanced algorithms to identify keywords that align with your content and are likely to rank well on search engines.

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Yes, KeySearch includes YouTube research tools to discover effective keywords and optimize your videos for maximum reach.

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KeySearch's Webpage Audit Analyzer scans your website for potential problems and provides detailed reports on areas that need improvement.

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KeySearch vs. Ahrefs

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KeySearch vs. Semrush

Semrush is overkill for most users and has a steep learning curve with a high price tag. KeySearch is a simple, affordable alternative that provides all the essential SEO tools you need to grow your website.

KeySearch vs. SE Ranking

SE Ranking is too feature-bloated for most users with a steep learning curve and a high price tag. KeySearch is a simple, affordable alternative that provides all the essential SEO tools you need to grow your website.

Free Keyword Research Tool: (AI-Powered) SEO Keyword Research & Ideas

Researching the best keyword ideas for your blog? This free keyword research tool will help you find blog ideas, identify low competition keywords, find monthly search volume, see the ranking difficulty, and much more! Simply type your keywords below to get started.

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Rank Faster in Search Engines with this Free Keyword Tool (to Get More SEO Traffic)

Like it or not, if you want to start a blog and get traffic from search engines (like Google & Bing), you’ll need to research the right keywords to try and rank for. The best keyword ideas for most bloggers will have medium search volume and low keyword difficulty. That’s exactly why I wanted to build this free keyword research tool. To show you those keyword suggestions (with metrics) for free with just a quick keyword search.

Here’s why keyword research is important: If you start out by competing right away with entrenched websites who’ve been covering similar keywords for over a decade & working on their SEO, it’s highly unlikely your blog posts will outrank theirs. They’ve been doing it for much longer and likely have a lot of resources fueling their business.

How to Choose Which Keywords to Write About (Diagram) Full Size Blue

Of course, your blog content must not only be well-optimized for on-page SEO , but you’ll also have to invest time & effort into promoting your content in ways that’ll attract backlinks, build the authority and trustworthiness of your website in the eyes of search engines like Google . More on that later 😊

What is a Keyword Research Tool?

A keyword research tool is a tool that helps you identify the right topics & opportunities you should write about, by analyzing keywords for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. It’s the backbone of a proper keyword research process .

This free keyword research tool functions by typing in a main keyword or phrase, then it generates a list of related keywords and their search volumes, competition levels and (soon) a rankability score. This data will help you identify the most effective keywords to use in your content & guide in optimizing your blog posts for search engines. Use the list of keywords to see how much estimated organic traffic you can expect to generate from relevant Google searches on the topics you plug into the tool.

Example of Using a Free Keyword Tool (Search Results with Monthly Search Volume and Difficulty Score)

The best keyword research tools will show you these kinds of metrics:

Estimated Monthly Search Volume : Estimated monthly search volume is a metric that shows the approximate number of times a keyword or phrase is searched for on a search engine per month. This is useful for identifying the popularity and potential traffic of a keyword and determining its competitiveness.
Keyword Difficulty : How difficult will it be to rank on the first page of Google search results for this keyword? This is useful for identifying the feasibility and potential success of ranking for a keyword in search engine results.
CPC (Cost-Per-Click) : Cost per click is a pricing model used in online advertising like Google AdSense, where the advertiser pays each time a searcher clicks on an ad (called PPC from the advertiser’s perspective). This pricing model is used on Google’s search engine results pages and the CPC for a particular ad is determined by factors like the keywords, targeting, & competition. Advertisers can use CPC data to determine the potential cost and return on investment of their ads over time.
Country-Specific Results: Search volume and difficulty for just about every keyword phrase will vary by country (where the searcher is located). By default, all results from a search with this keyword tool will show US (United States) monthly search volume and keyword difficulty. However, there’s a dropdown menu near the search bar, where you can select to see country-level data for any nation in the world, to help with your local SEO strategy.

The free keyword research tool we’ve built is designed to not only show you exactly how much estimated monthly search volume there is for a particular keyword, keyword phrase or topic—but to also show you how difficult it’ll be to rank on the first search engine results page (SERP) for that keyword. You can see these data points for any country in the world. After feedback from my readers, we decided to hide the CPC metrics that show you cost-per-click to run Google ads and be competitive in top placements for these keywords—mostly because bloggers don’t really care about CPC.

How to Optimize Your Blog Posts for Google Search (SEO) with this Keyword Planner

Now that we’ve covered the basics of keyword research & what this keyword planner tool can help you accomplish, let’s dive into the exact strategies that’ll help optimize your blog content to rank for new keywords & rank higher in organic search queries today.

1. Do Keyword Research to Be Sure You’re Pursuing the Best Keywords

The best keywords to pursue for your blog (especially if you’re relatively early on in your blogging journey), are going to be as close to the intersection of medium to high search volume and low keyword difficulty .

The Best Keywords to Rank for SEO Traffic (Keyword Tool Example Diagram Overlap)

As a professional blogger of more than a decade, I’ll be the first to tell you that finding the right keywords that fit in that often narrow gap of medium search volume and low competition, can be a bit of a challenge. This means that many of the best keywords you’ll pursue are going to be what’s considered long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are great, because there are almost always a significantly lower number of search results on a particular SERP (Search Engine Results Page). If you’ve done your homework and have a blog strategy —or content strategy—that you’re executing on to grow your content marketing ROI, then keyword data is going to be incredibly important for you to keep an eye on.

2. Look for Medium Search Volume & Low-Competition Keyword Ideas

The real usefulness of a keyword tool, is in showing you the right keyword phrases to target for your blog content. Sure, it makes sense to pursue the most popular blog post ideas millions (even billions) of people search for answers about, but unless your blog is very well-established & highly authoritative, it’s going to take years of dedicated effort promoting that content in order to see the organic search traffic you’re hoping for.

Very High Competition Keyword Phrases (Difficulty Level Very High) Keyword Tool Example Optimized

My blogging philosophy is all about balance. Yes, plant those seeds for longer-term traffic growth on extremely competitive phrases in your blog’s niche , but don’t have the expectation that they’ll rank high in Google search in the short-term.

Focus most of your time on pursuing keyword phrases at the intersection of medium search volume and low competition wherever possible. That’s the sweet spot for actually getting traffic quickly. Because if you want to build momentum (and motivation), you need real people visiting your blog soon. You won’t ever get to a place of being able to compete with entrenched websites who’ve been in your niche for 10+ years, until you lay the foundation for early traffic growth with realistic keywords you can rank for soon.

Here are the traffic ranges we (usually) use to define low, medium, high and very high search volume with my free keyword tool:

Low Search Volume: 0 to 1,000 monthly searches
Medium Search Volume: 1,000 to 5,000 monthly searches
High Search Volume: 5,000 to 10,000 monthly searches
Very High Search Volume: 10,000+ monthly searches

Understand where your blog is at in the grand scheme of its development—if you’re relatively new or in the middle of your journey, the majority of your organic search traffic will come from these low & medium search volume keywords. Invest in your blog’s future with more competitive (higher volume) keywords, but know that it’ll take months—or in most cases, years, to start ranking for High & Very High competition keyword phrases.

3. Evaluate the Metrics to Find Relevant Keywords

When you type in a search term with this free keyword tool, you’ll immediately see dozens of related keywords and recommendations for other keywords you should consider writing about.

Example of Keyword Research Using ryrob Keyword Tool (Sales CRM)

The best keyword research tool is more than just another part of your free SEO tool stack . It’s the foundation of making sure you’re blogging about the right keyword ideas in the first place. Taking the example above of a search for “Sales CRM,” an extremely competitive keyword phrase, you’re instantly shown dozens of options for related keyword phrases—many of which are less competitive than just these top results.

Search Volume: Number of Monthly Google Searches for a Keyword

As we touched on above, the Search Volume metric in this free keyword tool displays the number of estimated monthly searches on Google for the corresponding keyword phrase. It’s your proxy for how popular a given keyword phrase is (or not).

Keyword Difficulty: How Hard it Will Be to Rank for this Keyword

Keyword Difficulty gives you an estimate of how challenging it’ll be to rank for the corresponding keyword phrase. With this free keyword research tool, you’ll be presented keywords with these difficulty scores:

Low : Most blogs (even relatively new sites) should be able to quickly compete on this keyword phrase
Medium : Well-established blogs will compete quickly on these keywords, but newer blogs will need to put a meaningful amount of effort into promoting their content & naturally building backlinks with strategies like guest blogging & writing for publications to increase your organic search rankings.
High : This should be your stretch goal level of difficulty to aim at ranking for within the next 6 to 12 months if you’re investing a lot of time and effort into growing your blog . It’ll be a challenge to rank for these terms, no doubt. But if you’re consistently promoting your blog content for months, you can expect to see some movement and first page of organic Google search result rankings on high difficulty terms, depending upon your how authoritative your blog is in the eyes of search engines.
Very High : There’s no way around it, you’ll be competing with extremely well-established websites & businesses that have a vested interest in defending their search rankings for these keywords. Often, you’ll be going up against companies that generate millions (or billions) in annual revenue. It’s not impossible to rank for very high difficulty keyword phrases—my blog ranks for many of them—but it’ll take A LOT of time, effort and high quality backlinks from very high authority websites in order to get there. Think years of investing time, effort and resources.

In most cases, the difficulty level can be boiled down to how many backlinks your blog post can attract from other authoritative blogs, website & publications. One of the primary ways Google’s search algorithm determines which content pieces should rank at the top of search results, is authority . And authority is largely defined by the number and quality of links your content has from other authoritative (trustworthy) websites.

Country: How Does Your Local SEO Competition Stack Up?

We built this keyword research tool to showcase country-specific monthly search volume & keyword difficulty, because not everyone is based in the United States—or targeting readers based in the country.

Country Selection Dropdown Option for Country-Specific Keyword Tool (Monthly Search Volume)

For that (obvious) reason, there’s a handy dropdown menu near the search bar that allows you to select & filter your keyword data for any country in the world. By default, our keyword tool shows search data for the United States (US), but you’re always just one click away from seeing results for search activity in any other nation.

Bonus: Use My Free SEO Checklist Alongside this Keyword Planner Tool

Once you’ve used my keyword research tool to decide what to cover for your blog, you’ll need to actually to write the blog post . Then, it’s time to optimize your articles for maximum organic search ranking ability (also known as search engine optimization, or blog SEO ).

Here’s my step-by-step SEO checklist to use before hitting publish on a new blog post:

Be sure to install and use the Yoast plugin for WordPress
Double check you’re writing about a useful keyword phrase for your readers
Optimize your headers to encourage rich snippets and quicker indexing
Make sure you only have an H1 header once (your post title at the top)
Follow proper header hierarchy (H2 sub-header sections with H3 subtopics within)
Use your primary keyword phrase naturally in-text (keyword density)
Include a healthy mix of internal and external links (at least 3-5 external links)
Write an enticing, keyword-rich meta description that’ll attract readers
Use image alt descriptions to your advantage (with keyword rich descriptions)
Decide on an appropriate length for your blog post (usually at least 1,500+ words)
Write an SEO (meta) title that’s designed to rank (use my blog title generator tool )
Place your keywords in the slug / URL / permalink (see my permalinks guide )

Incorporating these foundational SEO best practices into your writing process will help immensely when it comes to optimizing your content & ranking high in Google search over time. And the more you apply these strategies to long-tail keywords, the quicker you’ll see more traffic from relevant keywords in your niche.

The Features of This Free Keyword Tool for Bloggers

We’ve explored a lot already, but let’s quickly touch on the features of my free keyword tool.

Keyword Explorer (Estimated Search Volume)

The purpose of the Explorer tab of this free keyword research tool (the default tab you’ll land on) is to show you the two most important SEO metrics when deciding which keywords to pursue in your blog content strategy :

Monthly Search Volume
Keyword Difficulty

With these two metrics, you can make an informed decision about which keyword phrases to pursue for your blog. As we’ve covered, I always recommend a strategy of focusing primarily on medium search volume and low competition keywords—with a smaller proportion of more competitive terms that offer longer-term traffic value as your blog grows & becomes more authoritative.

Keyword Ideas (Suggested Blog Topics & Ideas)

Rather than just typing in popular keywords and hoping to compete against a sea of well-established sites, we built this keyword generator to show you less competitive keywords to write about—while still giving you the opportunity to generate meaningful organic traffic.

Keyword Ideas Tab (Screenshot of Free Keyword Research Tool) Business Ideas Search

In the future, we’re hoping to add features like autocomplete keyword suggestions, incorporate YouTube keywords & Amazon keywords, csv keyword list download functionality, provide click-through rate (CTR) estimates for top-ranking content & a way to show you a rankability score that quantifies how likely your site will be to rank for each particular keyword phrase. I recommend you always double check this data with Google Search Console once your blog content starts to rank & get traffic, to make sure you’re optimizing for the right search terms.

Keyword Tool FAQs & SEO Tips

Here are just a few of the most frequently asked questions I get from readers (on social media, in my blogging courses and in the comments across my blog) when it comes to doing keyword research , using this keyword tool & how to optimize content for organic search.

Is this a Good Answer the Public Alternative Keyword Tool?

Yes, absolutely. We built this free keyword tool, in part, to be a great alternative to Answer the Public—a longtime free keyword research tool that recently changed ownership and now limits searches dramatically. This Answer the Public alternative has no search limits and provides you with not only valuable insights like monthly search volume & a difficulty score, but we take it a step further by offering you dozens of free blog topic ideas for inspiration on how to best approach a particular keyword (just click on the light bulb icon next to your keyword of choice).

While this keyword research tool is designed to be great for beginners to get actionable insights & ideas, it shouldn’t be directly compared to in-depth (paid) SEO tools like the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, Moz Keyword Explorer and SEMRush. There will also always be a robust free version of this tool—which almost no company offers. We don’t (yet) have a Google Chrome extension either, but that’s a feature request we’re considering, to help make sure this stays one of the best free keyword research tools.

How do I Interpret the Keyword Metrics in this Tool?

The Monthly Search Volume metric gives you an estimate of how many people search this exact seed keyword phrase in Google search each month. While the estimates aren’t perfect for all specific keywords, this free keyword tool uses a technology (API) that connects to a Google search insights product. The Difficulty rating functions on a scale from Low to Medium, High and Very High, which denotes just how challenging it’ll be for your blog to rank on the first page of organic Google search results for the particular keyword phrase.

Why do the Best Free Keyword Research Tools Have So Many Limits?

The short answer is that these keyword tools cost money to operate. My free keyword generator is 100% free without restrictions or limits to readers of my blog today, because it isn’t yet being used by millions of people every day.

There may come a day in the future when this free keyword research tool is so popular that I’ll need to either charge for usage beyond a certain number of keywords searched each day—or offer paid plans with additional features to help make this tool more valuable to a wider audience. Costs for running this tool include things like the API for the database & software that analyzes Google’s billions of search queries, then synthesizes all that data into actionable insights you can hit the ground running with.

Google Keyword Planner is another 100% free to use keyword research tool worth considering, and you don’t have to spend any budget in Google AdWords campaigns in order access it either. You just need a Google account—like with Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

How is this Free Keyword Research Tool Different than Google Keyword Planner?

I’m a little biased, but I’d like to think this keyword tool we’ve built, presents digestible information to you in a way that strips out unnecessary metrics (that very few people care about and aren’t necessary to creating top-ranking blog content). Google Trends is another Google product that can present directionally useful data to fuel your keyword research, but I like to think our tool packages that information in a more actionable format.

We’ve also connected the keyword research process to a blog idea generation feature with the “Ideas” tab of this tool, so that you can quickly click on a keyword phrase that looks interesting, and get hundreds of ideas & ways to write about that particular topic. I wanted to build this tool to function the way I think about keyword research—remove the b.s. and focus on what matters most: creating useful content for your (future) audience.

Does this Keyword Tool Take Search Trends into Account?

Yes, we’ve built this free keyword tool to use an API that tracks up-to-date data on how many searches are being done for a particular keyword phrase at a given time.

So if you search for “board games for kids” today and see that it has 1,300 in estimated monthly search volume, you could come back during the holiday season and see that this search query all of a sudden has 20,000+ monthly searches happening because the Christmas season is right around the corner. Consider the searches you do here as up-to-date.

If your blog is already established and you’ve been seeing traffic & results from your digital marketing efforts, be sure to double check the keyword data here and compare it with what you’re seeing in your Google Search Console dashboard. Estimates here can vary from real world results.

Should I Look at United States (US) Keyword Data or Focus on My Country?

There’s no definitive answer on this one—it’s a personal choice based on your overall blog strategy . If you want to attract the (most often) largest possible audience on broadly understood topics, then use this keyword research tool on its default settings, which will show you search data for the United States.

If on the other hand, you’re pursuing a strategy that involves speaking to a more country-specific or localized audience of readers, then you should definitely filter the search data to see results for your own country. For example, if you’re hoping to attract a local audience that’s interested in fun things to do in your area—without concern for tourism—then filtering down to your country-level search data will give you the most accurate picture of which topics are most searched by the people around you.

Can I Use this Tool for Youtube Keyword Research?

Right now, the data this keyword tool uses is based on Google search results. We’re working on adding a tab that offers a YouTube-specific data set to factor into your video keyword research, so stay tuned soon.

Can I Use this Tool for Amazon Keyword Research?

Right now, the data this free keyword tool uses is based on Google search results. We’re working on adding a tab that offers an Amazon-specific data set to factor into your eCommerce-focused keyword research, so stay tuned soon.

Why I’m so glad you asked! In addition to the free blog title generator, we’ve also put together several more free AI tools —specifically AI writing tools —here on my blog (based on their full, unlimited versions inside RightBlogger ), including an AI article writer , AI paragraph rewriter , domain name generator and many more coming soon.

Tool built by the incredibly talented @Sup .

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Keyword Research Tool

Find keyword ideas with the research tool.

Discover relevant keywords for your website quickly and easily with the Keyword Research Tool from Seobility.

Related keywords
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The Keyword Research Tool is completely free and does not require a registration.

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Keyword Ranking Monitoring

Free Keyword Research Tool

Discover new ranking opportunities for your website.

Are you looking for new content ideas related to your focus keyword? Using Seobility’s free Keyword Research Tool, you can easily discover similar keywords that could be attractive to target. In addition, competitor analysis lets you unveil the traffic sources of your competitors, so you can prove whether these keywords could be a good fit for your website as well. You can use various sorting and filter options to narrow your search to keywords with high search volume and low competition. This way, you will find low-hanging fruits for your website with ease! Tip: Our Keyword Research Guide walks you step-by-step through the entire keyword research process and shows you how to use the tool in practice.

Create your own keyword set using a wide range of filter options

Add the keywords to your seobility project with just one click.

The filter options of our Keyword Research Tool let you refine the numerous keyword ideas as you wish. For example, you can search for short- and long-tail keywords by setting the number of words, or you can narrow down the results to a specific search intent , such as informational keywords. The results list includes important details about each keyword, such as the search volume per month, competition, and average CPC. It also lets you analyze the top 10 websites ranking for this keyword on Google in order to assess your chances of success. Once you made your choice, you can export the results list as CSV or add your keyword set to your Ranking Monitoring Dashboard in Seobility .

What’s the difference between the Keyword Research Tool and Google's Keyword Planner?

The keyword research tool helps you analyze organic search results.

Wondering why you should use a keyword research tool instead of Google's Keyword Planner , which also provides you with free keyword ideas including search volume and CPC? Google developed the Keyword Planner as part of their Google Ads platform to help companies choose the right keywords to target with their ad campaigns. That’s why it only provides metrics that are relevant for paid search , such as search volume, CPC, and Google Ads competition. The Seobility Keyword Research Tool offers way more than that, including several additional analyses related to organic search . For example, you can check the top 10 Google search results for each keyword and access key details about each result, including monthly traffic, domain rating, and number of backlinks. In addition, you can conduct a competitor analysis to find the keywords that your competitors rank for but you don’t, plus the keywords they target in their Google Ads campaigns.

Keyword research based on a target keyword

Search for relevant keywords associated with your core topic.

Similar keywords that are related to the term you entered
Questions related to the keyword that are frequently asked by search engine users
Related searches that Google displays in its search results
Auto complete searches suggested by Google as the term is being typed in
Related terms from the same broad category as the keyword entered

Keyword research using a URL/domain

Identify the keywords a domain or url is ranking for.

In the second section of the Keyword Research Tool, you can analyze any domain or URL to find the keywords it ranks for, both organically and in paid search. You will be provided with important details such as the domain’s rank and the estimated traffic each keyword drives to the site. You can even check the other URLs ranking in the top 10 for this keyword. Use this feature to find the best traffic sources of your competitors and uncover new opportunities for your website!

Competitor Keyword Research

Compare your search performance with competitors.

Besides doing keyword research using a keyword or a domain, you can use the tool to compare your site’s organic and paid rankings with up to two competitors. You can choose between two types of analysis: "GAP" and "Intersections". The GAP analysis will reveal the keywords your competitors are ranking for (in both organic and paid search results) but you are not. This way, you can easily uncover new ranking opportunities for your website! When choosing intersection analysis, you will get a list of all the keywords that each of the domains entered is ranking for. You will see at a glance where you’re already ahead of your competitors and where there’s room for improvement.

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How to Do Keyword Research for SEO

1. How Search Engines Work
2. SEO Basics
3. Keyword Research
4. SEO Content
5. On-Page SEO
6. Link Building
7. Technical SEO

Organic traffic 7.5K
Linking websites 2.18K

The number of websites linking to this post.

This post's estimated monthly organic search traffic.

That’s why mastering the art of keyword research is so important for your success in SEO. The cost of making a mistake is just too high. Pick the wrong keywords, and you risk wasting lots of your time and resources.

And I don’t mean to intimidate you. Keyword research is not rocket science. In fact, you’re about to learn most of it in just about 20 minutes. But there are quite a few important caveats and misconceptions that you need to be aware of in order to make better SEO decisions.

So let’s dive right in.

1 How Search Engines Work
2 SEO Basics
3 Keyword Research
4 SEO Content
5 On-Page SEO
6 Link Building
7 Technical SEO

Keyword research basics

If you’re new to SEO, you’re probably wondering what keyword research even is and why it is so important. Well, this short chapter is for you. Otherwise, just skip to the next one.

What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of discovering valuable search queries that your target customers type into search engines like Google to look for products, services, and information.

Why is keyword research important?

If you publish a page on a topic that no one is searching for, that article won’t receive any traffic from Google (or other search engines).

Many website owners make that mistake, and it’s part of the reason why 90.63% of pages on the internet get no traffic from Google, according to our study .

Pie chart showing 90.63% of pages get no search traffic from Google

Keyword research helps you ensure that there is a search demand for whatever you want to write about. Thus, if your page ends up ranking well in Google for its target keyword, you’ll be enjoying a consistent stream of highly targeted visitors to it.

How to find keyword ideas

Keyword research starts from putting yourself in the shoes of your customers. What words and phrases might they use to find solutions to their problems? Plug these into a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer , and you’ll find thousands more relevant keyword ideas on top of what you just brainstormed.

It’s a simple process, but you need two things to do it well:

Good knowledge of your industry
An understanding of how keyword research tools work

That’s what this chapter is all about.

1. Brainstorm “seed” keywords

Seed keywords are the starting point of your keyword research process. They define your niche and help you identify your competitors. Every keyword research tool asks for a seed keyword, which it then uses to generate a huge list of keyword ideas (more on that shortly).

If you already have a product or business that you want to promote online, coming up with seed keywords is easy. Just think about what people type into Google to find what you offer.

For example, if you sell coffee and coffee-making equipment, then your seed keywords might be:

french press

Note that seed keywords themselves won’t necessarily be worth targeting with pages on your website. As the name suggests, you’ll use them as “seeds” for the next steps in this process. So don’t obsess too much over your seed keywords. It should only take a few minutes to pinpoint them. As soon as you have a handful of broad ideas related to your website’s topic, move on to the next step.

2. See what keywords your competitors rank for

Looking at which keywords already send traffic to your competitors is usually the best way to accelerate your keyword research. But first, you need to identify those competitors. That’s where your brainstormed list of keywords comes in handy. Just search Google for one of your seed keywords and see who ranks on the front page.

If none of the top-ranking websites for your seed keywords resemble your site (or where you’re trying to take it), then you should try searching for slightly more specific things.

For example, if you sell coffee-making equipment on your website, you may find more actual competitors in the search results for “cappuccino maker” rather than “cappuccino.” That’s because there are mostly e-commerce stores like yours ranking for the former and blogs ranking for the latter.

Once you find a competitor website that fits the bill, you should plug it into a competitive intelligence tool like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to check which pages bring it the most traffic and what keywords these pages are targeting.

Top pages report results, via Ahrefs' Site Explorer

After repeating the process with a few of your competitors, you’ll find yourself with a pretty sizable list of relevant keywords. And you’ve barely even started your keyword research!

Whether these keyword ideas are purely informational (i.e., blog articles) or have commercial intent (i.e., product pages) is something we’re going to determine in later stages of our keyword research process. For now, your goal is to collect as many relevant keyword ideas as you can.

Make sure to repeat this process for as many competitors as you can. We have a handy report in Site Explorer , which will help you discover more of them. It’s called “Competing Domains” and shows you similar websites to the one you’ve entered based on the common keywords that they rank for in Google.

Competing Domains report results via Ahrefs' Site Explorer

If you’re doing keyword research for an established website, you may find that you’ve already covered most of your competitors’ keywords. In this case, you should try using the Content Gap report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer . It finds keywords that one or more of your competitors rank for, but you don’t.

To use it, plug a few of your competitors’ websites into the top section, then paste your own site into the bottom field and click “Show keywords.”

Content Gap tool, via Ahrefs' Site Explorer

You can learn more about content gap analysis in this video .

3. Use keyword research tools

Competitors can be a great source of keyword ideas. But it’s very likely that there are many keywords that your competitors haven’t covered yet. You can find these using various keyword research tools.

Keyword research tools all work the same way. You plug in a seed keyword, and they pull keyword ideas from their databases based on that keyword.

Google Keyword Planner (GKP for short) is perhaps the most well-known keyword tool. It’s free to use, and although it’s made for people who want to display paid advertisements in Google, you can also use it to find keywords for SEO purposes.

Here are some keyword ideas that GKP has given me for the seed keyword “coffee” :

It is important to note that GKP is capable of generating keyword ideas that don’t necessarily contain your seed keyword in them. Take the keyword “percolator,” for example. Unless you’re a hardcore coffee connoisseur, you probably won’t know this relates to coffee. Which makes GKP quite a useful tool for discovering non-obvious keyword ideas.

And whenever you discover an interesting keyword like that, try using it as your new seed keyword and see what kind of new keyword ideas you’ll get from it.

Beyond Keyword Planner, there are quite a few other free keyword research tools . These are great if you’re just starting out, but you’ll soon realize that they’re quite limited in terms of data and functionality.

Thus, if you decide to commit to growing the search traffic to your website, you may as well skip the free tier and use a “professional” keyword research tool. Like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer .

Let’s enter a few of our seed keywords and see how many keyword ideas it gives us.

Matching terms report results, via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

3.9 million keywords! No free tool will let you work with such a vast number of keyword ideas.

That may seem like an overwhelming number of keywords to work with. And it is. But don’t worry. You’ll learn how to narrow them down right in the tool later in this guide.

For now, let me briefly explain the differences between the two main types of keyword idea reports that we have in Keywords Explorer .

Matching terms

This report will only show you the keyword ideas that contain your seed keywords in them. It has two modes: “Terms match” and “Phrase match.”

“Terms match” shows keyword ideas that contain all words of your seed keyword in them, regardless of where exactly they are and what order they’re in. So if our seed keyword is “coffee machine,” we’ll get the following keyword ideas:

coffee vending machine
machine gun kelly coffee shop

“Phrase match” only returns keyword ideas that have the words of your seed keyword in the exact order as you entered them. Like so:

best coffee machine
coffee machine with grinder

Related terms

This report will show keyword ideas that don’t necessarily contain your seed keywords in them. It also has two modes: “Also rank for” and “Also talk about.”

“Also rank for” shows you search queries that the top-ranking pages for your seed keyword also rank for.
“Also talk about” shows you words and phrases that are frequently mentioned on the top-ranking pages for your seed keywords.

4. Study your niche

Everything we’ve discussed so far is enough to generate an almost unlimited number of keyword ideas. But at the same time, the process kind of keeps you “in the box.”

You can solve this by going to the places where your target audience hangs out—industry forums, groups, and Q&A sites—and studying their conversations.

For example, here’s a thread I found on the /r/coffee subreddit:

Post about AeroPress on /r/coffee subreddit

A quick check in Keywords Explorer , and I found this search query: “aeropress coffee to water ratio.” It only gets 150 searches per month, but the fact that this topic got 42 upvotes on Reddit means that people really appreciate this knowledge. Plus, the content of that Reddit thread can serve as a foundation for my future piece of content.

Other than browsing industry forums, your existing customers can also be a great source of keyword ideas. So the next time you talk to them, remember to pay attention to the language they use and the common questions they ask. That might lead you to some original keyword ideas to cover on your website.

How to analyze keywords

Having access to millions of keyword ideas is all well and good. But how do you know which ones are best? After all, going through them all by hand will be a near-impossible task.

The solution is simple: Use SEO metrics to narrow things down and separate the wheat from the chaff before adding them to your keyword list.

Let’s explore four keyword metrics you can use to do this.

Search volume

Search volume tells you the average number of times a keyword gets searched per month. For example, “donald trump” has a monthly search volume of 3.1 million in the U.S. alone.

Overview of "donald trump," via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

There are four important things to know about the search volume metric:

It’s the number of searches, not the number of people who searched – There are cases where someone might search for a keyword multiple times a month (e.g., “weather in singapore” ). All such occurrences contribute to the search volume of that keyword, even though it’s the same person making searches.
It doesn’t equal how many visits it will send you if you rank for it – Even if you manage to rank #1, your traffic from that one keyword will rarely exceed 30% of its search volume. And that’s if you’re lucky.
It’s an annual average – If there are 120K searches for a keyword in December and none for the remaining 11 months of the year, its reported monthly search volume will be 10K (120K/12 months).
It’s country-specific – Keyword tools often display search volume for the selected country. But some of them also have an option to show you the global search volume, which is the sum of search volumes across all countries.

Almost every keyword research tool will have a search volume filter to let you focus on the keyword ideas with a specific range of popularity. It has two main use cases:

Filtering out super high-volume keywords – If your site is new, then you probably don’t want to waste your time looking at keywords with 10K+ monthly searches because they’re likely to be too competitive for you.
Filtering specifically for lower-volume keywords – Perhaps you want to find uncompetitive, low-volume keywords where you can easily get a little bit of traffic. These are often referred to as “ long-tail keywords .”

Long-tail keywords are a household name in SEO. And yet they’re often overlooked. It seems no one wants to go after a keyword unless it gets at least a hundred searches per month. Let alone if it comes up as having zero search volume.

List of keywords showing corresponding search volume of 0–10

Such “zero volume” keywords will only bring a few visitors per month if you rank for them. But the thing is they add up! If you publish a hundred articles targeting such keywords, your annual total traffic may actually add up to a few thousand highly targeted visitors.

It’s a common rookie mistake to disregard low search volume keywords. They’re just as useful as their more popular counterparts. Often even more useful, since they’re more specific and often have high commercial value.

Another important thing to remember about search volumes is that they may vary slightly from tool to tool. That’s because each tool calculates and updates this metric in different ways.

All in all, search volume is an incredibly important metric in SEO. So I highly recommend that you read this dedicated article that I wrote about it.

Given that search volume is an annual average, it can often lead you astray in terms of the future search demand of a given search query. If some keyword had a big spike in popularity, this would inflate its average search volume while the popularity might actually decline from there.

Overview of "axie infinity," via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

The infamous NFT game, Axie Infinity, had a big spike in search volume in July 2021. But from there, it’s only been going downhill. So even though the annual average search volume is reported as a solid 169K, last month’s search volume was actually just 39K and is likely to drop even further in the coming months.

If you haven’t heard about it before, Google Trends is a nice free tool for analyzing trending searches. And we have written a pretty extensive guide on how to use it.

Traffic Potential

The U.S. search volumes of the following two keywords are nearly equal:

Two keywords with nearly identical search volumes

Which means that the amount of search traffic that you may get from targeting each of them should also be nearly equal, right?

Well, not quite.

Let’s take the top-ranking pages for each of these keywords and compare how much search traffic they get in the U.S. This can easily be done by copying their URLs into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer .

Overview of a post about sales pages, via Ahrefs' Site Explorer

And it turns out that one of these pages is actually getting nearly 5X more search traffic than the other.

How can that be?

Well, webpages don’t rank in Google for just a single keyword. If you look at the two screenshots above attentively, you’ll see that the top-ranking page for “sales page” is ranking in Google for 55 keywords (check the “Organic keywords” tile). While the top-ranking page for “submit website to search engines” ranks in Google for a total of 406 different keywords.

Here are some of them (as seen in the Organic keywords report in Site Explorer ):

Organic keywords report results, via Ahrefs' Site Explorer

Whatever search query you have in mind, different people will phrase it differently while, essentially, looking for the same thing. Google is smart enough to understand that. And it, therefore, ranks the same page for all these similar search queries.

We studied this “phenomenon” back in the day , and it turned out that the average top-ranking page would also rank for about a thousand similar keywords.

This means that you should not blindly rely on the search volume of a single keyword when estimating the search traffic that your page is going to get if it ranks for it. What you need to do instead is examine the top-ranking pages for that keyword and see how much search traffic they get in total from all the variations of that keyword, which they rank for.

Here at Ahrefs, we thought it was such an important thing to consider when analyzing keywords that we have developed a dedicated metric to address it.

It’s called “Traffic Potential,” and it shows how much search traffic the top-ranking page for your keyword gets.

Overview of "submit website to search engines," via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

In Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer , the Traffic Potential metric is located right next to the search volume. This saves you lots of time looking up what page ranks #1 for that keyword and how much search traffic it gets in total.

Both the search volume and Traffic Potential metrics are country-specific, though. So if you need to gauge the worldwide search traffic of a top-ranking page, you’ll need to use Site Explorer with “All countries” mode selected.

Keyword Difficulty

Experienced SEO professionals typically gauge the ranking difficulty of each keyword manually. That is, by looking at the search results for each keyword and analyzing them. They account for many different factors to judge how hard or easy it’ll be to rank:

Search intent
Content depth, relevance, freshness, authority
Number (and quality) of backlinks
Domain Rating
SERP features

This process varies from person to person, and there’s no consensus on precisely what is and isn’t important here.

One person might believe that Domain Rating is important, and another might think that relevance plays more of a role.

The opinions might also vary depending on the type of search query that they’re analyzing, because for different kinds of queries Google gives preference to different things.

All of that makes life a little difficult for SEO tool creators, who try to distill the complex and intricate concept of ranking difficulty down to a simple two-digit number.

But after talking to many professional SEOs about the signals that an actionable Keyword Difficulty (KD) score should factor in, we realized that everyone agreed on at least one thing: Backlinks are very important for ranking.

So, in the end, we decided to base our Keyword Difficulty (KD) score on the number of unique websites linking to the top 10 ranking pages.

Infographic showing the four ranges (easy, medium, hard, super hard) of Ahrefs' keyword difficulty scale

As you can see in the image above, KD relates to the estimated number of linking websites your page needs to rank in the top 10.

Did you get that? It’s not the estimated number of linking websites you need to rank #1. It’s the estimated number you need to rank in the top 10. Getting to #1 is an entirely different battle.

Many people misuse the KD metric by setting the filter from 0 to 10 and focusing solely on the easy keyword ideas. But here’s why avoiding high-KD keywords might be a mistake:

You should go after high-KD keywords sooner, not later – You’ll need lots of backlinks to rank for high-KD keywords, which takes a lot of time and resources. So it pays to create your page and begin promoting it as soon as possible. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get there.
Look at high-KD keywords as link opportunities – The fact that the top-ranking pages for some keywords have lots of backlinks is a sign of a “link-worthy” topic. If you create something original on that topic, there’s a good chance lots of people will link to you.

The bottom line is this: KD is not there to deter you from targeting specific keywords. It’s there to help you understand what it’ll take to rank for a given query (as well as the “link-worthiness” of a given topic).

Just know that you should always manually assess keywords before going after them and not rely solely on any tool’s difficulty score to make your final decision. No single score can distill the complexity of Google’s ranking algorithm into a single number. Be wary of tool creators who suggest otherwise.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

Cost Per Click (CPC) shows how much advertisers are willing to pay for a click on an ad displayed on top of search results for a given keyword. It’s more a metric for advertisers than SEOs, but it can serve as a useful proxy for a keyword’s value.

For example, the keyword “project management software” has a pretty high CPC of $30. That’s because people searching for it seem to be looking for a product to buy.

List of two keywords. One with a high CPC, the other with a low CPC

But it’s a different story for “project management methodologies.” This is clearly an informational search query, and the odds of selling your project management software to these people are not as high—hence, the much lower CPC of $6.

One important thing to know about CPC is that it’s much more volatile than search volume. While the search demand for most keywords stays roughly the same from month to month, their CPC can change any minute as more companies display ads for them.

This means that the CPC values that you see in various SEO tools are merely snapshots in time and aren’t particularly precise. If you want to get real-time CPC data, it is recommended that you use AdWords.

How to target keywords

A very important step in analyzing keywords is to identify what kind of page you’ll need to create in order to maximize your chances to rank. And if you can use that page to target a group of relevant keywords all at once. Or perhaps create a few additional pages to target some of the keywords individually.

Let’s explore how you determine those things.

1. Identify the Parent Topic

Let’s say that you’ve got the following keywords on your list:

List of keywords with corresponding KD and search volume

All of these search queries seem to be talking about the same topic: “whipped coffee.” But does that mean that a single page can rank well for all these keywords? Or perhaps you’ll need to create individual pages to target each of them separately?

The answer largely depends on how Google sees these keywords. Does it see them as part of the same topic? Or does it see them as individual topics?

You can get a sense of this by searching for each of these keywords one by one and comparing the search results. For example, let’s compare the search results for the keyword “whipped coffee” with those of the keyword “whipped coffee recipe” :

Side-by-side comparison of the SERP overview of "whipped coffee" and "whipped coffee recipe," respectively

The top-ranking pages for both keywords are nearly identical. This means that Google sees the search query “whipped coffee recipe” as a subtopic of a more general query, “whipped coffee.” So you can rank for both keywords with a single page.

Now let’s compare the search results for “whipped coffee” with those of “whipped coffee without sugar” :

Side-by-side comparison of the SERP overview of "whipped coffee" and "whipped coffee without sugar," respectively

This time, there’s absolutely no crossover between the two SERPs. That means that “whipped coffee without sugar” isn’t part of a broader “whipped coffee” topic. Or at least Google doesn’t think so. Which means that you’ll need to create two separate pages if you want to target both of these keywords.

Comparing the search results for seemingly related keywords is a great way to understand how closely related they are and if you should target them with one page or multiple pages. But doing this for hundreds of keywords can be a rather daunting task.

That’s why we developed a handy feature in Keywords Explorer , which helps you to identify if a keyword you’re looking at is a part of a broader topic or, rather, deserves a dedicated page of its own.

We call it the Parent Topic.

List of keywords; notably, each has a corresponding Parent Topic

The way we identify the Parent Topic of a keyword is very simple. We take the page that ranks #1 for that keyword and look up if there’s a more popular search query that it gets search traffic from.

So for the keyword “whipped coffee recipe,” we have identified that its top-ranking page is also ranking at the top for a more popular keyword, “whipped coffee.” Which isn’t the case for the keyword “whipped coffee without sugar.” It turned out to be a Parent Topic to itself.

The Parent Topic functionality is extremely helpful for grouping large lists of keywords into the so-called topical clusters. But we don’t recommend that you follow it blindly. And here’s why.

In the screenshot above, Keywords Explorer says that the search query “what is whipped coffee” is a subtopic of “whipped coffee.” Which means that you don’t need to create a dedicated page if you want to rank for it.

But let’s take a look at the top-ranking pages for the “what is whipped coffee” keyword:

SERP overview for "what is whipped coffee"

Right at position #3, we see a page that is optimized precisely for targeting that specific search query “what is whipped coffee.” While the pages above and below it are actually targeting a more general term: “whipped coffee recipe.”

Thus, if you feel that a certain subtopic may actually deserve a dedicated page of its own, just take the risk and go for it! It may very well pay off.

2. Study the search intent

Let’s say that you have the following keywords on your list:

Now you need to understand which should be best targeted with informational blog articles and which should be product or category pages.

For some keywords, this is obvious. You wouldn’t create a product page for “how to brew cold brew coffee” because searchers are clearly looking for a tutorial.

But what about a keyword like “arabica coffee” ? Do searchers want information, or do they want to buy some? In SEO, we call this studying the search intent.

Google, presumably, has some ways of identifying what exactly searchers want to see for any given search query. And whatever page satisfies the search intent best tends to float to the top of the search results. So the way you determine the search intent behind some keywords is by looking at the top-ranking pages.

Let’s look at the SERP for “arabica coffee” :

Here we have both: informational pages and online shops. In SEO, we call this a fractured search intent. It means that you may be able to rank for this keyword with any of the two page types.

But pinpointing the right search intent doesn’t end with identifying the right page type for a particular query. Ideally, you want to factor in the following variables:

Type – For example, blog post, product page, category page, landing page, online tool, etc.
Format – For example, guide, listicle, news, review, comparison, etc.
Angle – That’s your unique spin on a given topic.

Here’s a nice example of a dominant content angle. In the search results for “how to make latte, ” someone has focused on making a perfect one, while someone else has decided to share how it can be done without an espresso machine.

But what if you tried the following angle for your own article: “How to Make a Latte Like Gordon Ramsay .” Maybe some people would consider this to be better than “perfect” and click on your page?

As you can tell, the reason why you need to analyze the search intent of a keyword is to not necessarily follow it to a T.

If you have a strong opinion about the search intent of a given search query but none of the top-ranking pages seem to follow it, give your intuition a chance. Even if your page is different from what’s already there, Google may give it a chance and show it to some of the searchers. And if they happen to like it, your page will secure its spot on the SERP.

How to prioritize keywords

Prioritizing your list of keywords and deciding where you should invest your efforts first is probably the least straightforward and extremely “individual” part of the keyword research process.

There are just too many things to consider:

What is the estimated traffic potential of this keyword?
What’s the ranking difficulty? Who are you competing against?
What will it take to create a perfect page? Or maybe you already have one, and it needs to be improved?
What’s the business value of this keyword? What would you get from ranking for it?

That last point is a particularly important one. While search volume, traffic potential, ranking difficulty, and search intent are all important considerations, you also need to factor in what ranking for this keyword will be worth to your business.

How to gauge the “business potential” of a keyword

Many marketers judge the value of a keyword by mapping it to the so-called buyer’s journey, i.e., a process people go through before making a purchase. Conventional wisdom says the earlier people are in their journey, the less likely they are to buy.

Here’s one popular buyer’s journey framework:

Top of the Funnel (TOFU) – People are looking for general information about the subject.
Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) – People are researching available solutions to their problem.
Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) – People are looking to make a purchase of a specific product or service.

TOFU keywords tend to have high search volumes but low conversion rates (i.e., “keyword research,” which has 5,700 monthly searches). While BOFU keywords are extremely lucrative but their search volumes are much lower (i.e., “best keyword research tool,” which has 800 monthly searches).

At Ahrefs, we think that this kind of framework is rather limiting and perhaps even misleading.

Here are three reasons why:

First, the fact that someone is looking for a TOFU term like “keyword research” doesn’t mean that you can’t promote your product to them. (Which is exactly what I did in this very article with all the mentions of our Keywords Explorer .)

Second, it’s quite challenging to assign each keyword a definitive TOFU, MOFU, or BOFU label because things aren’t always that clear-cut. For example, “best keyword research tool” could be a MOFU or BOFU keyword for us. It depends on how you look at it.

Third, some marketers broaden their definition of TOFU to such a degree that they end up covering completely unrelated topics. For example, the folks at HubSpot have written articles targeting the following keywords: “famous quotes,” “ice breaker games” and, most hilarious of all, “shrug emoji.”

Here at Ahrefs, we’ve developed our own way of determining the business value of a keyword.

We call it “business potential,” and it’s a simple score from 0 to 3, which indicates how easy it will be to pitch our product while covering a given keyword.

Business potential: Table with scores 3 to 0. And explanation of criteria to meet each score

To be completely honest with you, we do sometimes have internal debates within our team when we’re scoring our blog topics according to this scale. And yet we still prefer it to any of these conventional “buyer’s journey” frameworks.

Which keywords should you start working on first?

Unfortunately, there’s no straightforward answer to this question. As SEOs like to say, “It depends.”

Are you working on a brand-new website or an established business?
Are you the only marketer, or do you manage a large team?
Are you responsible for the actual conversions or providing new leads to the sales team?
How fast do you need to show results?

Keyword research is an act of balancing your unique circumstances with a set of metrics and concepts, which we’ve just covered: traffic potential, keyword difficulty, business potential, and search intent.

In some cases, your job will be to get as much traffic as possible as fast as possible, which comes down to finding the high-volume, low-difficulty keywords. Other times, you’ll need to focus on leads or conversions, in which case business potential will be the most important metric to focus on.

Keyword research is not the process of finding “easy to rank for” keywords. It’s the process of finding the keywords that make the most sense to your business.

You should also have short-, medium-, and long-term ranking goals. If you only focus on short-term goals, you’ll never rank for the most lucrative keywords. If you only focus on medium- and long-term goals, it’ll take years to get any traffic.

Keyword research tools

Keyword research is practically impossible to do without specialized tools. And if you’re only starting out or have a tight budget, here are some free keyword research tools for you:

Google Search Console – It shows all of the search queries that your website is currently ranking for and getting clicks from.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools – This is our free plan, which is very similar to Google Search Console. But other than showing you what keywords your website is ranking for, we also show you their Keyword Difficulty (KD) scores.
Google Keyword Planner – It’s a tool for those who want to run ads in Google. But SEOs, too, can get some value from using it.
Keyword Generator – Our free tool for generating keyword ideas.
Keyword Difficulty Checker – Our free tool for checking the ranking difficulty of a keyword.

And once you get truly serious about growing the search traffic of your website, make sure to sign up for Ahrefs and give Keywords Explorer a spin. This tool has pretty much everything you need to perform expert-level keyword research and discover some lucrative keyword ideas.

Key takeaways

If you want to get search traffic, you have to create content on topics that people are searching for.
The best way to kickstart your keyword research process is to study what keywords are bringing search traffic to your competitors.
Professional keyword research tools have vast databases of keywords, and they can show you millions of keyword ideas that contain your seed keywords in them.
Search volume is an important metric to understand the popularity of a given keyword. But if you want to predict how much search traffic you may get from ranking for it, you need to look at the Traffic Potential.
Keyword Difficulty helps you to gauge how many links you’ll need to get to your page in order for it to rank in the top 10. But this simple two-digit number cannot give you an answer to the question, “How to rank #1 in Google?”
When targeting multiple related keywords, it is very important to understand if they’re part of the same topic and therefore, can, all be targeted with one page. Or if they represent distinct topics of their own and, therefore, deserve a dedicated page each.
Studying the search intent of each keyword will help you better understand what kind of page you’ll need to create in order to best satisfy searchers.
Business potential score is a very effective way to prioritize your list of keyword ideas. It reflects how easy it would be to pitch your product or service while creating content for a given keyword.

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Ask An SEO: How To Find The Right Long-tail Keywords For Articles

Learn how to find the right long tail keywords for articles and avoid keyword cannibalization. Improve your content strategy with non-traditional research methods.

This week’s Ask An SEO question comes from Carrazana in Cuba, who asks:

“How do you find the right, long-tail keywords for articles? I can not find the right keywords and long tail keywords for my post and articles. I use keywords everywhere.”

Great question, Carrazana! Lots of content professionals struggle with finding long tail keywords , and many worry about cross-over between posts, also known as keyword and topic cannibalization.

The way to find long tail keywords and prevent cannibalization is to change your mindset on needing keywords by article and incorporate non-traditional research tools . So, let’s solve this so it is no longer an obstacle for you.

I’m going to start by addressing cannibalization, then jump into using non-traditional keyword research methods like LinkedIn hashtags and strategies our agency uses to generate ideas for our clients.

One thing I’d like to emphasize is to not focus on keywords; focus on the topic, and providing the best possible user experience for the intent of the topic.

Cannibalization

Instead of thinking about the keywords that are needed, think about the topic that you’re writing for.

The same words and phrases could mean different things and have different intent based on the topic, even if they’re used in the same way. Not in the sense of a homonym or double entendre, but as in search intent.

The same phrase for the service should exist in multiple pages of content, including product or service pages for conversions, and in guides to help consumers learn more, decide where to purchase, or how to prepare. The difference here is the topic changes based on the intent.

On the conversion page, the phrase needs to reinforce that this is a page that the consumer can take action on. For a how-to guide, it is more informative and should help the consumer know how to do it themselves, prepare for the professional to come and visit, or learn how to hire the right person for the job.

Search engines are smart enough to know the intent of content and can show it as needed. This is why you want to have a clear intent when creating content.

If you sell apples, do not define what an apple is on your product or service page.

The person already knows; instead, define it on a blog post about “what an apple is.” The product or service page should be about the benefits of using the specific apple, like baking, eating it directly, or feeding it to specific animals as a treat.

Your blog posts can include definitions, guides, and comparisons of which apples are better for specific purposes and why, as well as other non-conversion-oriented content.

Both the product page and at least one guide will have “apples for horses,” but the intent is different.

One page clearly shows where you can buy an apple to feed a horse, while the other explains why that particular apple is better for horses, which may be its nutritional value or the way a horse’s tastebuds and body respond to the sugar or fiber content.

I’m making this up for the example; don’t take it as factual advice. You can deploy schema to let the search engines know when to show each page based on search intent.

Product and service schema goes on the pages where you want conversions, and article or blog posting schema can go on the guides and informative ones. The machine learning portions of the search engine will look at the associations around the text while other aspects read the schema to determine what the purpose of the page is.

Proper implementation and clear wording make the search engine’s job easy and reduce the chance of cannibalization. Now that you know how to prevent cannibalization, let’s go into finding long tail keyword topics.

Finding Long-Tail Keyword Phrases

Finding long-tail keyword phrases is simple when you step outside of the normal tool sets. You have data points your competitors and third parties don’t have access to using customer data, and there are non-traditional places you can search.

Customer Support

Start by reading customer service and live chat transcripts. See if you can extract questions that mention specific products or services or by a category like blue t-shirts or red apples. With this information, you can see the words and language your customers are using, and how frequently.

These become long tail phrases for content on all forms of pages. You can also see the questions they have, reasons they return product, and recommendations customer support offers to guide them to the correct option to purchase.

These data points lead to sizing guides and comparison shopping content, articles about one fabric being better than another for a purpose like cocktail parties or running a marathon, and answer questions for the shopping and checkout process.

You may also find that these are questions being asked about your competitors like which of their models is similar to a specific product on your website.

You can create solutions on your site to bring in this type of traffic by answering their customers’ questions and optimizing your site for them via search.

LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, And Other Hashtag Sites

Social media sites that power part of their search and algorithm with hashtags are a goldmine of topics.

Go to LinkedIn and click on a hashtag like #SEO or #business. You’ll see how many people subscribe to it, how often it is used, and engagement on new content published within the hashtag’s feed.

If the hashtag is being used regularly and has engagement, look at the posts that exist within it. By knowing which gets the most comments, activity, and other signals, you can use them as a basis for new content on your own website.

As a bonus, they can be shared on these social platforms and hopefully get social media engagement too.

Bonus tip: The most engaged may only be engaged because the person or company that shared has an active following. Look for three that are similar in topic and see if two of the three have engagement to determine if it has the potential for a bit of virality on social media.

Forums And Q&A Sites

Next, use forums and question-and-answer sites. Take a Reddit forum and plug it into an SEO tool like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz to see the keywords and phrases they’re ranking for.

You may find a lot of long tail that could be relevant to your own product or service offerings.

Then look at the specific threads showing up for these phrases and see if there are new long-tail keyword phrases being used by the community. This gives you insight into their mindset – compare it with your own live chat and customer service data.

Q&A Keyword Tools

There are some great tools out there to find long-tail phrases, like AlsoAsked.com and AnswerThePublic.com. When you type a keyword phrase in you can see the ideas these tools come up with for topics to write about and the keywords the tools feel are related to the main topic.

Use Autocomplete On YouTube And Search Engines

The last tip is to use auto-complete on search engines , including YouTube. Once on YouTube, type in a portion of a phrase or a keyword and you’ll see it begin to autofill potential matches.

When there’s one that is relevant for your audience, click it and then look at the titles and descriptions from each video.

Many creators use chapters, and these chapters are what the content creator found to be helpful and relevant to the phrase. Each can become topics and phrases for you as well. Next, watch each video, listen to the wording and phrases the YouTuber uses, and read the comments section below.

You’ll learn the questions that weren’t answered in the video, the jargon users use, and find more content ideas as well as gaps you can fill in to bring new information into the mix. This same strategy applies to TikTok, Instagram Reels, and other video content platforms.

There’s no shortage of ways to find long-tail keyword phrases; the only limit is your own creativity.

As a content writer and SEO professional, you have tons of it! I hope this post helps you find more to write about.

More resources:

How To Use ChatGPT For Keyword Research
Long-Tail Keyword Strategy: Why & How to Target Intent for SEO
Keyword Research: An In-Depth Beginner’s Guide

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

Adam Riemer is an award winning digital marketing strategist, keynote speaker, affiliate manager, and growth consultant with more than 20+ ...

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What Is ChatGPT? (And How to Use It)

Learn about ChatGPT and how best to use it safely and responsibly.

[Featured Image] Two female colleagues sit down at a laptop in an office while one asks, "What is ChatGPT?".

If you've spent time online since the first few weeks of 2023, you’ll likely have noticed the buzz surrounding ChatGPT. But what exactly is this latest generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool?

Read on to learn more about ChatGPT and the technology that powers it. Explore its features and limitations and some tips on how it should (and potentially should not) be used.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot from OpenAI that enables users to "converse" with it in a way that mimics natural conversation. As a user, you can ask questions or make requests through prompts, and ChatGPT will respond. The intuitive, easy-to-use, and free tool has already gained popularity as an alternative to traditional search engines and a tool for AI writing, among other things.

What does GPT stand for?

The "GPT" in ChatGPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer. In AI, training refers to the process of teaching a computer system to recognise patterns and make decisions based on input data, much like how a teacher gives information to their students and then tests their understanding of that information.

A transformer is a type of neural network trained to analyse the context of input data and weigh the significance of each part of the data accordingly. Since this model learns context, it's commonly used in natural language processing (NLP) to generate text similar to human writing. In AI, a model is a set of mathematical equations and algorithms a computer uses to analyse data and make decisions.

While older AI chatbots could answer questions with detailed responses, ChatGPT uses a dialogue format, allowing it to answer follow-up and clarifying questions and recognise and reject inappropriate or dangerous requests, such as questions about illegal activity.

How to use ChatGPT to augment your work

A thorough understanding of the features, limitations, and risks associated with generative AI makes it a powerful tool to save time and energy. Knowing how to communicate effectively with ChatGPT or any generative AI model is called prompt engineering.

New use cases are emerging every day. Consider the following ways you might incorporate ChatGPT (or another generative AI model) into your day-to-day work:

1. Conduct research.

While ChatGPT lacks some critical functionality of Google and other search engines—particularly in making attribution easy to see and access—it can be a useful starting point for conducting research. Here are two examples:

[Screenshot] Screenshot of a ChatGPT response to the prompt: "What topics should I research to better understand the philosophy of knowledge?"

2. Beat writer's block.

You're not alone if you've ever experienced difficulty getting started on a writing project while staring at a blank page. Depending on the source of your writer's block and what you're trying to achieve, you may be able to use ChatGPT to overcome inertia:

Get your creativity flowing with generated writing prompts.

Build an outline or structure from the key points you want to include.

Generate a first paragraph to build upon. You can go back and revise or delete it later.

Find that word that's on the tip of your tongue.

[Screenshot] A ChatGPT screenshot of the prompt "What's a good word for the feeling of boredom?"

3. Strengthen an existing piece of writing.

You can input an existing piece of text into ChatGPT and ask it to identify uses of passive voice, repetitive phrases or word usage, or grammatical errors. This could be particularly useful if you're writing in a language you're not a native speaker.

4. Write and debug code.

ChatGPT isn't just for use with text as prose. You can also use to:

Explain the functionality of unfamiliar input code

Generate boilerplate code to build off of

Identify bugs within existing code

Add comments to existing code for improved readability and collaboration

Identify edge cases where your code might fail

5. Generate keywords for blog posts or marketing campaigns.

ChatGPT's use of a transformer model (the "T" in ChatGPT) makes it a good tool for keyword research. It can generate related terms based on context and associations, compared to the more linear approach of more traditional keyword research tools. You can also input a list of keywords and classify them based on search intent.

[Screenshot] ChatGPT response to the prompt "What are 10 high-volume keywords on the topic of machine learning, along with sample blog post titles?"

6. Summarise long documents or explain complex concepts.

ChatGPT can quickly summarise the key points of long articles or sum up complex ideas in an easier way. This could be a time saver if you're trying to get up to speed in a new industry or need help with a tricky concept while studying.

[Screenshot] ChatGPT response to the prompt "Explain logistic regression in a way that a high school student could understand."

How does ChatGPT work?

ChatGPT uses natural language processing (NLP), an AI technology that deals with understanding, analysing, and generating human-like language. The large language model (LLM) was trained using a combination of two major inputs:

1. A massive volume of sample text pulled from web pages and program code before the end of 2021

2. Conversations provided by real humans, who demonstrated the desired responses to provided prompts, then ranked outputs from the model based on the quality of the response

Providing occasional feedback from humans to an AI model is a technique known as reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). Leveraging this technique can help fine-tune a model by improving safety and reliability.

Features and limitations of ChatGPT (and other generative AI)

ChatGPT represents an exciting advancement in generative AI, with several features that could help accelerate certain tasks when used thoughtfully. It also comes with limitations. Understanding the features and limitations is key to leveraging this technology for the greatest impact.

Features of ChatGPT

Some of the features of ChatGPT include the ability to:

Generate human-like text that mimics the style and structure of the input data

Generate a response to a given prompt or input text. This could include writing a story or answering a question.

Generate text in multiple languages

Modify the style of generated text (formal or informal, for example)

Ask clarifying questions to understand the intent of input data better

Respond with text that is consistent with the context of a conversation, such as offering follow-up instructions or understanding references made to previous questions

Other generative AI models can perform similar tasks with images, sounds, and video.

Limitations and risks of ChatGPT

While ChatGPT is a powerful tool, it has its limitations. To start, these types of transformer models lack common sense reasoning ability. This can translate to a limited ability to handle complexity, nuance, and questions around emotions, values, beliefs, and abstract concepts. These limitations can manifest in many ways:

It does not understand the meaning of the text it generates. While some output from ChatGPT may sound humanlike, the model isn't human. This has a few implications. It may be limited to handle nuance, ambiguity, sarcasm, or irony. Perhaps more problematic is the fact that it can generate text that sounds plausible but is incorrect or even nonsensical. What's more, it can't verify the veracity of its output.

It can generate biased, discriminatory, or offensive text. A language model like ChatGPT is only as good as its input data. This model was trained on large amounts of text data from the internet, including biased input. If the data used to train the model is biased, this can show up in the generated text.

Responses can be rooted in outdated information. The model has limited knowledge of events after 2021 and is not connected to the wider internet, except for its paid versions. If you're using ChatGPT to produce code, it could be pulling from outdated examples that no longer meet modern cybersecurity standards.

Output can be formulaic. ChatGPT can generate text similar to existing text and is known to overuse certain phrases. This can mean text that reads as flat and unimaginative, or in more extreme cases, could constitute plagiarism or a copyright infringement. The University of Manchester has attempted to address this with guidelines around referencing ChatGPT and AI generative tools when including them in research for assignments [ 1 ].

The tool isn't always available. Its exploding popularity has led to some capacity issues. When the servers get overloaded, you may get a message that "ChatGPT is at capacity."

5 tips for using ChatGPT responsibly

Take advantage of generative AI tools thoughtfully and responsibly by following these five guidelines:

1. Always review and edit generated text for accuracy and quality.

2. Treat generative AI as a starting point rather than a finished product.

3. Use it for repetitive or time-consuming tasks that don't require creativity or originality.

4. Don't use any sensitive or private information as input data.

5. Leverage it in conjunction with other tools and techniques, including your own creativity, emotional intelligence, and strategic thinking skills.

Get started with ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that can generate human-like text in response to a prompt or question. It can be a useful tool for brainstorming ideas, writing different creative text formats, and summarising information. However, it is important to know its limitations as it can generate factually incorrect or biased content.

Keep exploring generative AI tools and ChatGPT with Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT from Vanderbilt University. Learn more about how these tools work and incorporate them into your daily life to boost productivity.

Article sources

The University of Manchester. "Library Help: Teaching and Learning , https://manchester-uk.libanswers.com/teaching-and-learning/faq/264824." Accessed April 19, 2024.

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Science and Technology Directorate

National Preparedness Month: Having the Tools at Hand

Dimitri Kusnezov, Under Secretary for Science and Technology

September marks the start of several important American traditions—kids are back in school, football games are on tv, and pumpkin spice is on the menu. It’s also National Preparedness Month, when we take steps to ensure we have the resources needed to protect ourselves, our families, and our communities in an emergency.

S&T is working year-round to make sure emergency managers and first responders have the tools and technologies needed to protect their communities. As we’ve seen in recent years, there are an increasing number of extreme weather events such as wildfires, hurricanes, and heat waves that threaten the nation. Staying ahead of these threats requires new capabilities that take advantage of technical and scientific innovations to help public safety officials predict and mitigate the effects of extreme weather.

Knowing what’s coming

The Emergency Preparedness and Response to Weather Extremes initiative (EMPOWER) pilot program, a collaboration between S&T and the State University of New York (UAlbany), is actively developing a package of weather-related support tools that give federal, state, and local first responders access to real time analytics/artificial intelligence, weather data, and visualization capabilities. Weather stations are equipped with automated environmental and weather sensors, collecting critical data such as temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, air pressure, precipitation, solar radiation, snow depth, and soil information, and utilize high-definition cameras that capture photos of the surrounding environments every five minutes.

This data is then shared with regional emergency personnel to help them respond as severe weather events occur. Getting that insight in real time is critical to coordinating an effective response and any potential evacuation efforts.

A picture of a flat device on a thin support on the left and three small devices on a thin support next to it on the right. They are standing in a field of burned grass with smoke in the distance.Two fire sensor prototypes during a field test.

S&T’s wildland fire sensors are currently being piloted across the U.S., including in communities in Hawai’i, California, Oregon, and Colorado. These sensors alert agencies to early ignitions, allowing responders to get to the source and suppress the blaze before it spreads out of control. Advanced notice of an imminent fire hazard could also grant time needed for communities to make life-saving evacuation decisions. As we saw in last year’s tragic Lahaina wildfires, these emergencies can escalate rapidly and devastate communities, so having more time to coordinate response is essential.

The Coastal Resilience Center (CRC), a Center of Excellence funded by S&T, is working to arm communities with modeling and evaluation tools that will give local leaders a leg up in boosting response and resiliency. Last year during hurricane season, CRC—led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partnership with Jackson State University, a Historically Black College and University—used its high-performance ADvanced CIRCulation model (ADCIRC) to forecast storm surges, tides, and coastal circulation.

During Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Idalia last August, ADCIRC provided detailed prediction of storm category, landfall location, radius, wind speed, surge levels, and storm track. This information was incorporated into daily operations briefings for DHS leadership and informed local communities across the East Coast, helping emergency managers manage resource deployments and track progress of response efforts.

Having the tools they need

S&T’s Wildland Firefighter Respirator is small, lightweight, and easy to wear, and is designed to protect wildland firefighters from fire-borne particulates and toxic gases they may encounter in the field. S&T has worked with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, International Association of Fire Chiefs, U.S. Forest Service, and fire departments around the country to develop, test, and evaluate the technology, which is now undergoing NIOSH and NFPA certifications. This tech provides an important improvement in personal protection for wildland firefighters, who can’t be weighed down with bulky breathing equipment as they work across miles of remote areas.

Episode 4 of this season of the Technologically Speaking podcast features Ron Langhelm, program manager for S&T’s Community and Infrastructure Resilience Program (C&IR) who discusses the work he does helping communities to be better prepared for disasters like floods, earthquakes, wildfires, and hurricanes by connecting them with the tools that they need to get back up and running. C&IR also assists with infrastructure resilience, assisting communities to identify in advance what they need to mitigate disaster-based impacts.

The H2Rescue is a hydrogen fuel cell/battery hybrid vehicle that can be driven to disaster sites to provide 25kW of export power to support emergency response operations for up to 72 hours without refueling. S&T, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Department of Defense, and Cummins, Inc., developed the prototype. With the increasing frequency of natural disasters, it is critical that we develop and leverage new and emerging green technologies that can be employed during disaster relief efforts and do not require fossil fuels for operation.

The digital indoor map navigator Mappedin was completed in 2022 and has since flourished. Navigating complex mazes of hallways and corridors in potentially chaotic or low-visibility situations can be tricky, and hard copy or digital building blueprints can be cumbersome or even outdated, adding precious seconds when time is of the essence. Developed by S&T and digital indoor map navigator Mappedin, the online Mappedin mapmaking subscription converts floor plans into interactive and easily maintainable digitized maps. With easy-to-use mapping tools and data, Mappedin provides high-quality 3D map creation, data maintenance, and map sharing for advance preparation and planning, and assistance during emergency incidents. First responders arriving on the scene can use Mappedin to visualize the interior layout of structures before entering a building and make life-saving decisions.

These are just a few of the efforts currently underway at the Directorate, and I encourage you to explore more of our preparedness-related work . Helping communities to have the tools they need, before they need them, is an important way that S&T carries out its mission to protect our nation. Seasons change, but staying prepared is important all year long.

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[News] China’s Surge in Chipmaking Tool Purchases May Lead to Overcapacity Crisis of Legacy Chips

To counter the U.S.’s ongoing semiconductor restrictions launched the U.S., China has outspent the U.S., South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan combined on chip manufacturing equipment in the first half of this year.

However, sources cited by a report from Commercial Times have warned that China’s excessive investment could soon lead to global overcapacity issues in traditional chip production, which is similar to the oversupply problems seen in the electric vehicle and solar energy sectors in recent years.

Per the data cited by CNBC from the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), China spent USD 24.73 billion on chip manufacturing equipment in the first half of 2024, surpassing the combined USD 23.68 billion spent by the U.S., South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan during the same period. This surge in spending is driven by China’s efforts to achieve semiconductor self-sufficiency amid U.S.-China tensions.

The report further notes that since the U.S. implemented stricter export restrictions in October 2022, Chinese companies have been rapidly accelerating their procurement. SEMI data suggests that China’s total procurement this year is expected to exceed USD 35 billion.

Citing Clark Tseng, Senior Director at SEMI, the report indicated that the current equipment stockpiling trend may continue into the second half of this year and is expected to ease only by 2025 as companies work to absorb excess capacity.

Citing Alex Capri, a Senior Lecturer at the National University of Singapore and Research Fellow at the Hinrich Foundation, CNBC pointed out that Chinese companies are preemptively stockpiling chip manufacturing equipment in response to the risk of further export restrictions from Washington before the U.S. presidential election.

Capri highlighted that as China is making smooth progress in traditional chip production, the world might soon face an oversupply of traditional chips, similar to the overcapacity issues seen in electric vehicles and solar panels.

As a result, companies outside China could struggle to compete in the sector with lower-priced products from Chinese companies.

A previous report from Bloomberg pointed out that China has thus become the largest market by revenue for top global chip equipment suppliers. The latest quarterly financial reports from companies such as Applied Materials, Lam Research, and KLA show that China contributes approximately 40% of their revenue.

For Japanese company TEL and Dutch company ASML, the contribution from the Chinese market is even more significant, with nearly half of their revenue coming from China.

[News] China’s 1H24 Chip Equipment Purchases Exceed Taiwan, Korea, and US Combined, Reaching USD 25 Billion
[News] China’s Import of Chip Making Equipment Hit New High This Year, with Mature Nodes Driving the Demand

(Photo credit: SMIC)

Please note that this article cites information from Commercial Times , CNBC and Bloomberg .

[News] Qualcomm Rumored to Consider Acquiring Parts of Intel’s Chip Design Business, with a Focus on PC Segment

[News] China's DRAM Expansion Raises Concerns, Potentially Impacting Samsung and SK hynix Profits

[News] Samsung Partners with TSMC, Its Foundry Rival, on HBM4 Development
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Find Great Keywords Using Google Autocomplete

Keyword Tool Is The Best Alternative To Google Keyword Planner And Other Keyword Research Tools

Here are a few reasons why:

Free version of Keyword Tool generates up to 750+ long-tail keyword suggestions for every search term

Unlike Keyword Planner or other tools, Keyword Tool is extremely reliable as it works 99.99% of the time

You can use Keyword Tool absolutely for free, even without creating an account

Are you a business owner, online marketer or content creator? If so, most likely you would like more people to visit your website, read your content and buy your products or services. The easiest way to achieve it is to find out what your potential customers or readers are searching for on Google and create content on your website around these topics.

Every search is an expression of people's needs, wants, interests and desires. Imagine how your business would benefit if you could analyze search trends on Google , find search terms that are related to your business domain and customize content on your website to serve the actual needs of your customers.

Keyword Tool will help you discover thousands of new long-tail keywords related to any topic by automatically generating Google's search suggestions. The keyword suggestions will be produced based on a Google domain and language that you choose.

How Does Keyword Tool Work?

Keyword Tool is free online keyword research instrument that uses Google Autocomplete to generate hundreds of relevant long-tail keywords for any topic.

Google Autocomplete is a feature used in Google Search. Its purpose is to speed up the searches performed by users on Google.

The search terms suggested by Google Autocomplete are selected based on many different factors. One of them is how often users were searching for a particular search term in the past.

Keyword Tool helps you employ Google Suggest for keyword research. It extracts Google keyword suggestions and presents it to you in an easy-to-understand interface.

To generate long-tail keyword suggestions, Keyword Tool prepends and appends the search term which you specify with different letters and numbers, places it into Google search box and pulls out keyword suggestions. Best part, all of it happens in a split of a second!

Using Keyword Tool, you can choose a specific Google domain out of 192 supported domains and one out of 83 languages that will be used to produce keyword suggestions.

The free version of Keyword Tool can generate up to 750+ keywords from Google autocomplete in seconds.

The advanced version of Keyword Tool, Keyword Tool Pro, provides on average two times more keywords in comparison to the free version and offers a handful of other useful features. You can find more information about Keyword Tool Pro and subscribe at this page .

You can quickly find and analyze thousands of relevant long-tail keywords with free or paid version of Keyword Tool and use them for content creation, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising or other marketing activities.

Why Is Keyword Tool One Of The Best Free Keyword Research Tools?

There are few places on the web where you can find keywords that people type in Google search box. One of the most popular sources of this information is Google Keyword Planner .

Unfortunately, data presented by Google Keyword Planner is meant to be used for paid advertising inside Google Ads platform. The keywords that you will find with this tool might be too generic and not very descriptive. In other words, barely useful for content marketing, blogging, or SEO.

Keyword Tool does not use Google Keyword Planner to generate keyword ideas. We find keywords that people search for on Google using the different source - Google Autocomplete.

Google Autocomplete, the source of data employed by Keyword Tool, was created by Google to make search experience for people easier and faster.

Basically, Google shows the autocomplete suggestions whenever you start typing anything into Google search box. It is in Google's best interest to show the most relevant keywords in the autocomplete suggestions. Keywords that would help Google to retrieve the most relevant websites and help users find the most relevant content for their search query.

Here is what Google says about the autocomplete predictions:

“ Autocomplete predictions are automatically generated by an algorithm without any human involvement based on a number of objective factors, including how often past users have searched for a term.

Keyword Tool Helps To Find Keywords That Are Hidden In Google Keyword Planner

Did you notice that you are unable to use Keyword Planner without a Google Ads account?

There is a reason for that.

Keyword Planner - is a tool created for advertisers and is not meant for content creation or SEO. Yes, it does contain valuable data about keywords such as competition, suggested bid, average monthly searches, etc.

But, at the same time, it will hide profitable long-tail keywords with thousands of monthly searches that can be used to create content for your website. Some digital marketing professionals think that it is done on purpose and helps Google to increase the competition and cost-per-click for a limited number of keywords.

Keyword Tool is the best alternative to Google Keyword Planner for content marketing and SEO as it does not hide popular keywords that can be used to create content for your website.

Keyword Tool For SEO And Content Creation

If you want your website to get traffic from Google or other search engines, you need to make sure that it contains content created around the right keywords. What this means is that you should be utilizing words that your potential audience is already using while looking for similar content, products or services online.

The best way to discover these keywords, as it was proven by thousands of thriving websites and online businesses, is to use keywords from Google search suggestions as a base to create content for your website.

By creating content around the popular keywords that your audience is using to find information online, you are already giving great value to your website visitors. In return, Google will reward your web property with higher rankings which entail traffic increase.

Keyword Tool For International SEO

If you are looking for keywords in languages other than English, you will find Keyword Tool's features very useful. Keyword Tool allows you to pull keywords from 192 Google domains and use 83 Google language interfaces to generate keyword suggestions. That way we make sure that the generated keywords will be relevant to the country and/or language that you are creating your content for.

Our paid subscriptions - Keyword Tool Pro and Keyword Tool API fully support all Google domains and languages and provide very accurate search volume, cost-per-click and Google Ads Competition Data for keywords in all 192 supported countries, 68,000+ individual locations and 46 languages.

Keyword Tool For Advertising

If you are running pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns and target your ads based on keywords that users type in Google, you know how important it is to select the right keywords for your campaigns.

The relevant keywords that you target with your ads will bring the right audience to your website. Showing your ads to people that type relevant keywords will result in higher click-through rate (CTR), lower cost-per-click (CPC) and higher conversion rates for your business. As a result, you will spend less money on advertising and generate a better return on investment.

Featured On The World's Leading Publications And Websites

“ Keyword Tool uses Google Autocomplete to generate a list of relevant, long-tail keyword suggestions . This tool can help you understand what people are searching for around your topics. For example, bloggers might use a tool like this to brainstorm blog post titles that will do well in search. Lindsay Kolowich Cox, Hubspot Blog

“ Keyword Tool is used by many leading SEO's to find long-tail and related keywords. Relying on Google's autocomplete feature, it gives you quick access to popular search terms that you may not think to search for in Google's Keyword Planner. John Rampton, Forbes

“ The first place to start is with long-tail research and this can be done with the help of a number of tools. My first choice, however, is always KeywordTool.io. Simon Penson, Search Engine Watch

“ KeywordTool.io: This long-tail keyword research tool can provide thousands of keyword suggestions from real user queries. Trond Lyngbø, Search Engine Land

“ Just like on the web, focus on relevancy and search volume. Do an exhaustive research on your keywords using the Keyword Tool. Rahul Varshneya, The Huffington Post

“ Keyword Tool: This is a tool where you can test keyword popularity. Jeff Boss, Entrepreneur

Frequently Asked Questions

⭐ what does keyword tool do, ⭐ how can i use keyword tool for free, ⭐ where does keyword tool get keywords from, ⭐ does keyword tool support different languages and countries.

Start Using Keyword Tool Now

This page has moved to https://ads.google.com/intl/ru/home/tools/keyword-planner/ .

IMAGES

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COMMENTS

Free Keyword Research Tool
Keyword Explorer is part of the entire Moz Pro SEO analytics platform. Improve the ROI of your content strategy with competitive intelligence and actionable recommendations. The World's most accurate SEO keyword research tool with over 1.25 billion traffic-driving keywords. Full keyword analysis with Ranking Keywords, Keyword Difficulty, Search ...
17 BEST Keyword Research Tools for SEO [2024 Reviews]
Brian's Bottom Line. One of the best overall keyword research tools on the market. Worth a try. 10. Moz Keyword Explorer. Find keywords that will generate the most traffic. Moz's Keyword Explorer does an awesome job of finding "lateral" keyword ideas. For example, take a seed keyword like "weight loss".
Free Keyword Research Tool by Backlinko
Free Plan: The 30-day Moz Pro trial gives you access to all of the tool's features. Moz is a good all-round SEO tool that has a pretty decent keyword research tool. However, in the search volume accuracy tests in Semrush's study, it only scored 24.29% compared to Semrush's score of 32.39%. 4.
Ubersuggest: Free Keyword Research Tool
Ubersuggest: Free Keyword Research Tool
Free Keyword Generator Tool: Find 100+ Keyword Ideas in Seconds
Free Keyword Generator Tool: Find 100+ Keyword Ideas in ...
Keyword Tool ⚠️ Google Keyword Planner【Search FREE】
Keyword Tool is free online keyword research instrument that uses Google Autocomplete to generate hundreds of relevant long-tail keywords for any topic. Google Autocomplete is a feature used in Google Search. Its purpose is to speed up the searches performed by users on Google.
The 10 Best Free Keyword Research Tools in 2024
For example, suppose you use bitcoin.org as the seed site. In that case, you get some hyper-specific keyword ideas that you might easily overlook in "conventional" keyword research tools. 6. Google Search Console. Google Search Console (GSC) shows how your website performs for its top 1,000 keywords in organic search.
16 Best Keyword Research Tools For SEO
1. Semrush. One of the most popular keyword research tools on the market, Semrush offers a comprehensive suite of SEO tools. Specifically for keyword research, it includes: Keyword Overview: Just ...
The 4 best free keyword research tools in 2024
The best free keyword research tools at a glance. Best for. Standout feature. Free plan. Moz Keyword Explorer. An all-around solution. Keyword prioritization metrics. 10 queries per tool per month, with 1,000 keyword suggestions and 10 SERP analyses per query. Google Keyword Planner.
Keyword Research for SEO: The Definitive Guide + Template
Free Tools. Keyword Research Tool Discover new keywords and performance data to use in your site content.; Backlink Checker Discover who's linking to you and your competitors.; Website Authority Checker Enter a domain to evaluate its overall quality and SEO performance.; Keyword Rank Checker Enter your domain to identify find your top traffic driving keywords.
Free Keyword Tool
WordStream's free keyword research tool is intended as a complementary tool to Google's keyword planner. Both tools allow you to search for keywords to add directly to your account. One advantage WordStream's keyword search tool has over Keyword Planner is the inclusion of concrete search volumes, rather than search volume ranges. ...
Keywords Explorer
Keywords Explorer
SEO Keyword Research Tool #1 ⚠️【100% FREE】
An SEO tool for Google is, in essence, a keyword tool. It allows you to perform keyword research, which is the foundation of SEO, and the first step towards optimizing a page or website by using relevant keywords. To do that, you can use a free SEO tool like Keyword Tool. A quick search can generate thousands of focus keywords and long tail ...
Find Your Campaign Keywords with Keyword Planner
Find Your Campaign Keywords with Keyword Planner
15 Free Keyword Research Tools For 2023
Best Keyword Research Tool For: Finding keyword ideas on search engines besides Google. Pricing: Free. Final Thoughts: 15 Best Free Keyword Research Tools For 2023.
KeySearch: Keyword Research Tool
It can do way more than just keywords but it really is the ultimate keyword research tool in my book. Not to mention at a bargain price!" Ben Hawkshaw-Burn @GeekyTechGeeks "Whether you're a business mogul, a Shopify wizard, or just starting your online journey, KeySearch is the ally you need in the digital battlefield." ...
Free Keyword Research Tool (AI-Powered) SEO Keyword Ideas
This free keyword research tool functions by typing in a main keyword or phrase, then it generates a list of related keywords and their search volumes, competition levels and (soon) a rankability score. This data will help you identify the most effective keywords to use in your content & guide in optimizing your blog posts for search engines.
Free Keyword Research Tool from Seobility
Discover relevant keywords for your website quickly and easily with the Keyword Research Tool from Seobility. URL / Domain. Competitor analysis. You have 2 of 3 checks left today. The Keyword Research Tool is completely free and does not require a registration. Check up to 1,000 subpages with a free Seobility account.
Keyword Research
Keyword Research - Bing Webmaster Tools
Keyword Research: The Beginner's Guide by Ahrefs
1. Brainstorm "seed" keywords. Seed keywords are the starting point of your keyword research process. They define your niche and help you identify your competitors. Every keyword research tool asks for a seed keyword, which it then uses to generate a huge list of keyword ideas (more on that shortly).
Find your campaign keywords with Keyword Planner
Our keyword research tool will help you find the keywords that are most relevant for your business. Research. Analyse keywords. Our keyword research tool gives you insight into how often people search for certain terms - and how those searches have changed over time. ...
Ask An SEO: How To Find The Right Long-tail Keywords For Articles
The way to find long tail keywords and prevent cannibalization is to change your mindset on needing keywords by article and incorporate non-traditional research tools. So, let's solve this so it ...
Keywords in Education Policy Research: A Conceptual Toolbox
1. This review intends to consider what Keywords in Education Policy Research can do in terms of the contribution it can make to the work of an educator, teacher educator and researcher in teacher education. While the authors' opening claim that for writers of all genres and none making oneself intelligible to others and to the world is 'a key dilemma' resonated deeply with me, I admit ...
What Is ChatGPT? (And How to Use It)
5. Generate keywords for blog posts or marketing campaigns. ChatGPT's use of a transformer model (the "T" in ChatGPT) makes it a good tool for keyword research. It can generate related terms based on context and associations, compared to the more linear approach of more traditional keyword research tools.
National Preparedness Month: Having the Tools at Hand
The Emergency Preparedness and Response to Weather Extremes initiative (EMPOWER) pilot program, a collaboration between S&T and the State University of New York (UAlbany), is actively developing a package of weather-related support tools that give federal, state, and local first responders access to real time analytics/artificial intelligence ...
[News] China's Surge in Chipmaking Tool Purchases May Lead to
The latest quarterly financial reports from companies such as Applied Materials, Lam Research, and KLA show that China contributes approximately 40% of their revenue. For Japanese company TEL and Dutch company ASML, the contribution from the Chinese market is even more significant, with nearly half of their revenue coming from China. Read more
Keyword Tool ⚠️ Google Keyword Planner【Search FREE】
Keyword Tool is free online keyword research instrument that uses Google Autocomplete to generate hundreds of relevant long-tail keywords for any topic. Google Autocomplete is a feature used in Google Search. Its purpose is to speed up the searches performed by users on Google.
Find Your Campaign Keywords with Keyword Planner
Our keyword research tool will help you find the keywords that are most relevant for your business. Research. Analyze keywords. Our keyword research tool gives you insight into how often people search for certain terms-and how those searches have changed over time. ...

Try Keyword Explorer for free

Generate and save keyword lists

Export your data

Find keywords in question format

Sort by predictive keyword metrics

Review SERP details by keyword

Check Keyword Difficulty

Take your SEO strategy global

Perform competitive keyword analysis

Do better keyword research in less time. Identify which keywords your site could rank for right now and find high-impact suggestions.

Generate relevant Keyword Suggestions

Analyze the SERP for a given keyword

Create Keyword Lists

Preview SERP features for every keyword

Explore Keywords by Site

Perform organic keyword analysis on your competitors

Moz’s Keyword Explorer neatly ties together keyword research metrics and makes complex analysis easy so we can spend less time in spreadsheets and more time generating qualified website traffic.

Part of the most trusted SEO analytics platform

The 4 best free keyword research tools in 2024

The best free keyword research tools

The best free keyword research tools at a glance

The best free keyword research tool overall

The best free keyword research tool for paid keywords

The best free keyword research tool for advanced SEO

Create new Asana tasks from SEMrush's new site audit campaign tasks

Create Notion database items for new SEMrush Site Audit tasks.

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The best simple and free keyword research tool

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Find Keyword Ideas in Seconds

Keyword Research for SEO: The Definitive Guide

1. Keyword Research Basics

2. How to Find Keyword Ideas + Template

3. Keyword Research Tools

4. Keyword Difficulty

5. How to Choose a Keyword

6. Advanced Tips and Strategies

What is Keyword Research?

Why is Keyword Research Important for SEO?

How Keyword Research Helped My Site’s Traffic Grow

Chapter 2: How to Find Keyword Ideas

Keyword Research Template

Brainstorm a List of Topics

Wikipedia Table of Contents

Searches Related To

Find Keywords on Reddit

Use Google and YouTube Suggest

Find Popular Topics Using Forums

Chapter 3: Keyword Research Tools

The Google Keyword Planner

ExplodingTopics.com

Keyword Surfer

Ubersuggest

Chapter 4: Keyword Difficulty

Long Tails Are (Usually) Less Competitive

Body Keywords

Long Tail Keywords

Authority of Sites on Google’s First Page

Keyword Difficulty Inside of Keyword Tools

Chapter 5: How to Choose a Keyword

Search Volume

Organic Click-Through-Rate

Business Fit

Keyword Trends

Chapter 6: Advanced Tips and Strategies

Barnacle SEO

GSC Keyword Research

Optimize Content around Synonyms and Related Keywords

Semrush Keyword Gap

Analyze Keywords Based on Searcher Intent

Find “Shoulder Keywords”

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